6 Day Tour Of The Peloponnese & Delphi

UNESCO site: Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns (1999) · Overnight: Nafplio

An hour out of Athens we stop at the Corinth Canal, the cut that separates mainland Greece from the Peloponnese — 79 metres deep through solid limestone, dug between 1882 and 1893. It explains Corinth itself: the city sat astride the isthmus, holding the land route north–south and the sea route between the Aegean and the Ionian.

We continue to Ancient Nemea, in a fertile valley of the northern Argolid, to the Sanctuary of Zeus — home of the Nemean Games, held every two years and famous across the Greek world. We pass through the vaulted tunnel into the stadium, where competing athletes scratched their names on the walls, and walk the Temple of Zeus and the excavated sanctuary. A tasting at one of the region’s wineries follows: Agiorgitiko has been grown in this valley since antiquity and now carries Protected Designation of Origin status.

The day ends in Nafplio, declared the first capital of liberated Greece in 1829. The evening is yours — the sea wall, the cobbled lanes of the old town, and more tavernas than you can work through in one night.

UNESCO sites: Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns · Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus (1988) · Overnight: Nafplio

The morning belongs to Mycenae, the citadel of Agamemnon and the capital of the civilisation Homer wrote about. We walk the Lion Gate, the Grave Circles where Schliemann found his gold, the palace, and the cyclopean walls — stone blocks so large that later Greeks assumed the Cyclopes had raised them. Nearby stands the Treasury of Atreus, the finest of the beehive tombs, a dry-laid vault whose span went unmatched in Europe for the next fifteen hundred years. The visit ends at the archaeological museum, where the finds bring the Mycenaean world into focus. UNESCO inscribed Mycenae in 1999, together with Tiryns.

We then cross to the Argolid’s Saronic coast for a seaside lunch, before Epidaurus. The sanctuary of Asklepios was antiquity’s foremost healing centre — set among pine-clad hills, it includes the abaton, where pilgrims slept in the hope of a healing dream, and the theatre: 4th century BC, still in use, and with acoustics that carry an ordinary speaking voice from the orchestra to all 14,000 seats. UNESCO inscribed it in 1988.

Back to Nafplio for the night.

Overnight: Dimitsana

The morning starts with the Archaeological Museum of Nafplio, whose collection runs from the Palaeolithic to the Roman period — its highlight the Dendra Panoply, one of the oldest surviving suits of full body armour in the world. Then Palamidi, the Venetian fortress on the 216-metre hill above the town: eight bastions, built between 1711 and 1714 in an astonishing three years, and lost to the Ottomans in 1715, the year after they were finished. The view runs the length of the Argolic Gulf.

In the early afternoon the road turns inland and climbs into Arcadia. Dimitsana — stone houses along a ridge above a gorge — is where we spend the night.

UNESCO site: Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae (1986) · Overnight: Ancient Olympia

A guided tour of Dimitsana’s Open-Air Water Power Museum — watermills, a tannery, and the gunpowder mills that armed the fighters of 1821 out of this one village. Below runs the Lousios Gorge, with the cliff-side Prodromou Monastery built flat into the rock face, a chance for an idyllic walk along the river.

Then up to Bassae, at 1,130 metres. The Temple of Apollo Epicurius was built here in the late 5th century BC by Iktinos, the architect of the Parthenon, and in 1986 it became the first Greek monument ever inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List — before the Acropolis. (Please note: the temple stands under a protective tent during conservation works. It is fully visible from inside, but the setting is not what the photographs show.)

We descend to Ancient Olympia for the night.

UNESCO site: Archaeological Site of Olympia (1989) · Overnight: Delphi

The morning is given to Ancient Olympia, at the meeting of the Alpheios and Kladeos rivers: the sanctuary of Zeus and the birthplace of the Olympic Games, held every four years from 776 BC until the late 4th century AD. We walk the Temple of Zeus — once home to the gold-and-ivory statue that was one of the Seven Wonders — the workshop of Pheidias where it was made, the Temple of Hera, and the stadium itself. The site museum holds the Hermes of Praxiteles and the pediments of the Temple of Zeus.

In the afternoon we leave the Peloponnese by its western end, crossing the Charilaos Trikoupis bridge over the Rio–Antirrio strait — 2.9 km of cable-stayed span, opened in 2004. On the far shore lies Nafpaktos, its small circular harbour still enclosed by the walls the Venetians raised in the 15th century. They called the town Lepanto: in October 1571 the Ottoman fleet sailed from this harbour to meet the Holy League out in the Gulf of Patras, off the Echinades islands, and was destroyed in an afternoon.

From the coast the road climbs the southern slopes of Mount Parnassos, heading for Delphi.

UNESCO sites: Archaeological Site of Delphi (1987) · Hosios Loukas (1990) · Ends: Athens

Delphi was the navel of the world, where two eagles released by Zeus from opposite ends of the earth were said to have met. For a thousand years no Greek city made a serious decision without consulting the Oracle. We walk the Sacred Way past the treasuries to the Temple of Apollo and out to the Tholos on its terrace below, then the museum, which holds the Charioteer — a bronze cast in 470 BC and recovered intact, his enamel eyes still in place.

On the way back to Athens, a last stop at Hosios Loukas, on the slopes of Mount Helicon. Founded in the early 10th century by the hermit Loukas of Steiris, who died in 953 and is buried in the crypt, it holds the best-preserved Byzantine mosaic programme in Greece. UNESCO inscribed it in 1990, with Daphni and Nea Moni of Chios.

Then back to Athens.