Epidaurus

Epidaurus is one of two things, depending on when you go. On a festival night in July or August, an ancient Greek tragedy is staged in the original fourth-century BC theatre under a clear sky. On any other day, when guides drop coins on the centre stone to show off the acoustics, it is an exquisite ruin in a quiet pine valley. Both are worth the visit, and the first is the reason to come.

Polykleitos the Younger designed the theatre in the late fourth century BC as part of the wider Asklepieion sanctuary, and modern engineering papers have studied its acoustics. A study in 2007 attributed the effect to the limestone benches, which filter out low-frequency background noise (wind, distant voices) and let higher-frequency speech carry cleanly. A coin dropped at the centre can be heard from the highest of the 55 rows. The seating bowl, the cavea, holds around 14,000 spectators in two tiers divided by a horizontal walkway, the diazoma.

The Asklepieion was the most important healing sanctuary in the ancient Greek world, dedicated to the god Asklepios, son of Apollo. Patients came to be cured by dream-incubation in the Abaton (a long colonnaded sleeping hall), by a regimen of diet and exercise, and by theatrical performance. Performance was understood as part of the therapy, not a distraction from it. The Tholos, a circular marble building whose ritual purpose is unclear, has the most refined surviving foundations in the sanctuary. The small museum holds inscriptions of votive cures in unsettling detail.

The Athens and Epidaurus Festival runs from late June to August. Performances begin around 9pm and finish near midnight. They are in modern Greek, with English surtitles for the major productions. Bring a cushion, because the stone benches are hard, and a light layer, because the night cools. Book early: Friday and Saturday evenings sell out months ahead. From Nafplio, the drive is 40 minutes.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    From Athens to the Argolid, take the A1/E94 to the Corinth Canal, then the A7 south. Amanzoe at Porto Heli is two and a half hours by road from Athens International Airport, or 25 minutes by helicopter to the resort’s own helipad. Nafplio is the closer base for the sanctuary itself, and a shorter drive from Athens.

  2. The address

    Amanzoe stands at Porto Heli on the Argolid’s east coast. It is Aman’s modern interpretation of the Acropolis: standalone Pavilions on a hilltop with private pools, marble interiors and 360-degree views over olive groves to the Aegean. The Aman Spa is the flagship Greek property, with nine treatment rooms, two hammams (steam baths) and a watsu pool for massage in warm water. It is the pedigree address for the sanctuary and the Argolid.

  3. The Little Theatre

    Mikro Theatro, the Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus, stands at Palaia Epidavros on the Argolic seafront. It is a 4th-century BC theatre of nine tiers and 18 rows of stone benches, built for the small city-state alone rather than the sanctuary. Its seats are inscribed with the names of civic sponsors. It was recovered from beneath an olive grove in the early 1970s under Evangelia Deilaki. It is half an hour by road from Nafplio, and far quieter than the great theatre.

  4. The Stadium

    The ancient stadium lies within the Asklepieion, the sanctuary of Asklepios, downhill from the great theatre. Its running track of about 181 metres was laid in a natural hollow in the 4th century BC, and athletic games were held there every four years in honour of Asklepios. The stone starting pillars and a run of stone benches for spectators survive in place. Most visitors leave after the theatre and the museum, so the stadium is the part of the sanctuary you tend to have to yourself.

  5. The Iamata

    The iamata stelai, the inscribed records of cures, are in the Archaeological Museum of Epidaurus. These four large marble slabs were inscribed in the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC with more than 70 case histories of healings at the sanctuary. Each records a pilgrim’s name, the ailment, the dream encounter with Asclepius and the cure that followed. They are among the earliest surviving medical case reports anywhere.

  6. Mycenae

    Mycenae, north of Nafplio, is the Bronze Age citadel of the Atreid dynasty, inscribed by UNESCO together with Tiryns in 1999. The Lion Gate stands as it was raised around 1250 BC, the only surviving monumental Mycenaean sculpture still in place. Behind it lies Grave Circle A, which Heinrich Schliemann excavated from 1876. It gave up the gold death mask he labelled the Mask of Agamemnon, now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

  7. Tiryns

    Tiryns lies 20 kilometres south of Mycenae on the road to Nafplio, and was inscribed by UNESCO with Mycenae in 1999. Its cyclopean wall, built of huge stone blocks, is 6 metres thick at the curtain and 17 metres at the corbelled tunnels. Its original height is estimated at 9 to 10 metres. The acropolis was raised in three Late Helladic phases from the end of the second millennium BC.

  8. Palamidi

    Palamidi is the Venetian fortress above Nafplio, built quickly between 1711 and 1714 during the second Venetian occupation. Its eight bastions stand on a hilltop 216 metres above the Argolic Gulf. The climbing path is traditionally called the 999 steps, though survey counts run closer to 857. Go in the early morning, before the heat closes the climb.

  9. Nemea

    Nemea lies on the road north from Argos, in the wine country of the Peloponnese. The Nemea PDO, its protected wine appellation, is dedicated to the native Agiorgitiko grape. Giannis Paraskevopoulos and Leontas Karatsalos founded Gaia Wines in 1994 at Koutsi, the semi-mountainous heart of the appellation. Ask for the Gaia Estate and the Gaia S, a 70/30 blend of Agiorgitiko and Syrah aged in French oak.

  10. The kitchen

    Aiolos Tavern is at Vasilissis Olgas 30 in Nafplio’s old town. It is Helen’s family-run kitchen, with hand-written menus and marine-themed art on rough stone walls. The cooking runs to drunken chicken with red peppers and wine, regional cheeses, walnut pie and filo pastry baked with feta and honey. The wine list runs to around 150 Greek labels.

Mythology

  1. Asclepius

    In Ovid’s Roman story of a plague, Asclepius sets out from his sanctuary at Epidaurus. The god appears as a gold-crested serpent, leaves his shrine in front of the gathered people of Epidaurus and boards the envoys’ ship for Italy.

  2. The Cures at Epidaurus

    Epidaurus was the chief sanctuary of Asclepius, and people travelled there to be healed. Pausanias saw slabs inside the enclosure naming, in Doric, each person the god had cured, the disease and the means, and he records that nobody was allowed to be born or to die inside the marks around the sacred grove.