Delphi

Delphi is over-day-tripped. The standard Athens itinerary buses guests in at eleven, runs them around the sanctuary at the worst possible hour, and buses them out by three. The site deserves better. Drive up the evening before, sleep in Arachova or in the small village of Delphi above the site, and arrive at opening — eight in summer, on a fresh morning when the only sound is wind and the cicadas in the cypresses. The transformation is total.

The ancients called Delphi the omphalos, the navel of the world, marked by a sacred stone in the inner sanctuary. The Pythia, priestess of Apollo, delivered prophecies from a chamber above a fissure in the rock from which fumes rose; modern geological analysis has identified ethylene and methane vapours in the spring water beneath the temple, which would account for the priestess's reportedly altered state. Whether or not the vapours are the explanation, no significant decision in the ancient Greek world was made without first consulting the oracle.

The Sacred Way switchbacks up through the sanctuary, lined with the foundations of treasuries (small marble strongrooms in which rival city-states displayed their offerings), past the Temple of Apollo with its inscribed maxims, to the theatre and the stadium higher up the slope. Allow two hours on the site itself. The Charioteer of Delphi, a near-perfect bronze of the early classical period rescued from a fifth-century BC chariot dedication, is in the museum at the entrance, and is one of the very few surviving original ancient Greek bronzes (most we know in marble Roman copies). Do not skip the museum.

The Castalian Spring runs at the foot of the Phaedriades cliffs above the site; ancient pilgrims washed here before consulting the oracle. The water has been redirected away from the original fountain, but the gorge is dramatic and worth the short walk. Stay one night, possibly two if you want to walk the trails up to the Korykian cave or the village of Kastri.

House Notes

  1. The address

    Santa Marina Arachova, on the slope above the village — 20 suites and two villas (Villa Delphi, Villa Eniochos), with the Ōsme Spa under the same roof. The mountain sibling of Santa Marina Mykonos, built by Elias Papageorgiou on a property facing Mount Parnassos. The pedigree address for a client arriving the night before the site.

  2. The olive grove

    The plain below Delphi holds the Amphissa olive grove — 5,500 hectares from Amphissa down to the Corinthian Gulf, between the villages of Erateini and Kirra, approximately 1,200,000 trees, 70% over 150 years old. The ancient path to the sanctuary ran through it; the modern road still does. Time the descent for the late-afternoon light.

  3. The Tholos

    Below the main sanctuary, in the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia — the gateway to Delphi for ancient pilgrims. The Tholos, the small circular building Theodorus of Phocaea raised in 380–370 BC, originally carried 20 Doric columns on the exterior and 10 Corinthian semi-columns within; three reconstructed Doric columns remain standing today. Many day-trip groups skip the short walk down.

  4. The Sphinx

    The Sphinx of the Naxians, around 560 BC — a colossal marble figure on a column of six drums crowned with one of the earliest Ionian capitals at the sanctuary, the monument standing 12.45 metres in its original height. The Naxians dedicated it to Apollo at the peak of their archaic wealth. It is now displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Delphi; fragments first surfaced in 1860, the rest in 1893.

  5. The European Cultural Centre

    The European Cultural Centre of Delphi, founded in 1977 by Konstantinos Karamanlis under the auspices of the Council of Europe. The grounds run to 100 acres on the slope below the village — a conference centre, a guesthouse, a sculpture park of contemporary European works, and an open-air theatre seating 1,000. The International Meetings on Ancient Drama have run from 1985 onwards.

  6. The Athenian Treasury

    On the first turn of the Sacred Way below the Temple of Apollo, the Athenian Treasury — the earliest Doric treasury built entirely of Parian marble, raised by the Athenians after 490 BC in thanks for Marathon. The metopes on the building are reproductions; the originals are in the museum at the gate. It is the one strongroom on the climb to read closely before the temple.

  7. Hosios Loukas

    The Byzantine detour east of Delphi, near Distomo on the slopes of Mount Helikon. Hosios Loukas was founded in the mid-tenth century by the hermit Loucas Stereiotis; the smaller Theotokos church is the earliest known four-column cross-in-square in Greece, and the larger Katholikon, dated 1011–12, is the earliest extant domed-octagon and holds the best preserved mosaics of the Macedonian Renaissance. UNESCO-listed since 1990.

  8. Galaxidi

    Galaxidi, the eighteenth-century merchant marine town on the Corinthian Gulf south-west of Delphi. Its Nautical & Historical Museum, Greece's oldest of the kind, occupies the 1870 town hall on Mouseiou & Stavrou Niarchou Street — 5,000 years of the local naval life and the largest assemblage of Greek sailing-ship paintings in the country. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 to 15:00. Dinner on the harbour after.

  9. The kitchen

    Dasargyris, on Delfon 56 in the heart of Arachova — close to a century of the same kitchen, the address for ribs, kokoretsi, kontosouvli, and the slow-cooked casseroles the mountain village makes its winter on. Service is at a single rustic hall beside the fireplace; the menu does not stretch beyond meat done well. Book ahead in February through April; the Athenians come up for skiing.

  10. The Stadium

    At the highest point of the sanctuary, above the theatre between the Phaedriades and the hill of Agios Ilias, the Stadium of Delphi — the best preserved in Greece, the track 177 metres long, the seating raised for around 6,500. Most groups turn back at the theatre and never make the last climb; the via sacra carries on up to it. Take it in the early cool, before the heat sits in the gorge.

Mythology

  1. Apollo

    Apollodorus says Themis delivered oracles at Delphi before Apollo killed its guardian Python and took possession. The sanctuary’s temple represented his arrival and housed both his cult statue and the omphalos.

  2. Charon

    In the Knidian Lesche at Delphi, Polygnotus painted Charon as an old man at the oars on Acheron, carrying two named figures in his boat. Pausanias describes the scene and connects it to an older passage in the lost epic Minyas.

  3. Gaia

    Gaia stands at the beginning of two ancient accounts of the Delphic oracle. Aeschylus names Earth as its first prophet, while Pausanias records a tradition in which Earth shared the oracle with Poseidon before giving her part to Themis.

  4. Hestia

    A Homeric Hymn places Hestia at Delphi tending the sacred house of Apollo. No excavated building is securely identified as the Delphic prytaneion; a foundation once given that name is now thought to have served another purpose.

  5. Mount Parnassus

    Mount Parnassus holds Delphi between the Phaedriades cliffs, with the Corycian Cave higher on its slopes and the ritual summits above it. Apollodorus also makes the mountain the landfall of Deucalion and Pyrrha after the flood.

  6. Pan

    Above Delphi, the Corycian Cave was sacred to its nymphs and especially to Pan. Excavation by Pierre Amandry in 1970–1971 recovered more than 25,000 animal knucklebones, supporting the cave’s use for divination and modest offerings.

  7. Pausanias

    Pausanias gives most of Book 10 to Delphi, including seven chapters on paintings by Polygnotus that once hung in the Lesche of the Cnidians, beyond the spring Cassotis (10.25.1). The paintings have not survived in any form, so his description is the only full record of them left, and the École française d'Athènes has excavated the sanctuary against his account since 1892.

  8. Phoebe

    In the opening prayer of Aeschylus’s Eumenides, Phoebe receives Delphi’s oracular seat from Themis without force and gives it to her grandson Apollo as a birth gift. Pausanias preserves a different succession that omits her.

  9. Pindar

    Pythian 4 answers Arcesilaus of Cyrene's chariot victory at the Pythian Games and ties its Argonautic account to Battus's Delphic oracle. Pausanias later recorded an iron chair inside Apollo's temple and the Delphic tradition that Pindar used it when singing or composing for the god.

  10. Python

    The Homeric Hymn places the dragon Apollo kills beside a spring below Parnassus and explains the Delphic name Pytho through its decay. Apollodorus names that guardian Python and makes the killing the point at which Apollo takes the oracle from Themis.

  11. The Castalian Spring

    The Castalian Spring is the water Euripides has Delphi's temple servants bathe in before they cross into the sanctuary of Apollo, and Pausanias calls it sweet to drink and pleasant to bathe in while giving three separate accounts of the name. The Ephorate of Antiquities of Phocis dates the first fountain house built to draw it to 600–590 BC and the second, cut whole from the rock, to about the first century BC.

  12. The Corycian Cave

    The Corycian Cave opens high on Mount Parnassus above Delphi and was sacred to Pan and the Nymphs. Herodotus records the Delphians carrying their possessions into it before the Persian advance, while excavation begun in 1970 established occupation reaching back to the Neolithic period.

  13. The Corycian Nymphs

    The Corycian Nymphs were worshipped with Pan in the Corycian Cave on Mount Parnassus above Delphi. Excavation begun by the French School at Athens in 1970 confirmed the cave’s long use, including its historical life as their sanctuary.

  14. The Delphic Oracle

    The oracle at Delphi was given by the Pythia, and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Phocis records that she pronounced it in an underground space beneath the cella of the temple of Apollo which only priests might enter. Herodotus describes the most famous consultation made there: Croesus of Lydia was told that if he sent an army against the Persians he would destroy a great empire, and the empire turned out to be his own.

  15. The Moirai

    Inside Apollo’s temple at Delphi, Pausanias saw images of two Moirai. Zeus Moiragetes and Apollo Moiragetes, each named as a guide of fate, stood beside them in place of the third.

  16. The Omphalos

    The Omphalos was the stone Delphi held to be the navel of the earth, and it stood in the cella of the temple of Apollo beside the statue of the god. Pausanias describes it as white marble, and Strabo, who treats the story as a fabrication, reports that two eagles released by Zeus from opposite ends of the world met above the spot.

  17. The Pythian Games

    The Pythian Games belonged to Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi. Their contests occupied several settings in the sacred land, including the theatre and the surviving stadium above the temple, while their earliest remembered form was a hymn sung to the god.

  18. The Sphinx

    The Naxians raised this marble sphinx on an Ionic column beside the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi around 560 BC — not the monster of the Theban story, but the same winged, woman-headed guardian type in stone, over 12 metres tall with its column and base. The base carries a fourth-century BC inscription renewing the Naxians' promanteia, the right to put a question to the oracle ahead of other visitors, and the statue now stands in the Delphi Archaeological Museum.

  19. The Theogony

    The Theogony is the earliest surviving text to fix Cronus's stone to this ground: it has Zeus set the stone "fast in the wide-pathed earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassus, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men" (Theogony 497-500) — Pytho being the sanctuary that Pausanias and other ancient writers call Delphi.

  20. Themis

    Aeschylus makes Themis the second holder of the Delphic oracular seat, after Gaia and before Phoebe. Pausanias records another tradition in which Earth gives her share of the oracle to Themis, who passes it directly to Apollo.