Kalamata

Kalamata has the airport that matters for the southern Peloponnese. Most luxury guests heading to Costa Navarino, the Mani or Messenia fly into Kalamata directly from European hubs. The alternative is to drive down from Athens, three and a half hours on the motorway. The terminal is small, the formalities are fast, and a hire car puts you on your beach by lunchtime.

The city is older than its reputation for an airport and olives suggests. On 23 March 1821, Kalamata was one of the first cities to declare independence in the Greek War of Independence, two days before the official start date of 25 March that became the national holiday. The thirteenth-century Frankish castle above the lower town anchors the old quarter. The small Benakeio Archaeological Museum holds the better-known finds from the Messenian valley. The Kalamatianos, the slow circle dance considered the Greek national folk dance, takes its name from the city.

Most travellers know the city for its olives and olive oil. Kalamata olives carry a PDO, a protected designation of origin. Large, pointed, glossy and almost black, they are the table olive of choice in the better Greek tavernas, and the region also presses olive oil. The Saturday farmers’ market is the right place to buy both. Messenian cooking more broadly is wild greens, figs, graviera cheese from the mountains and the slow-cooked goat dishes of the Taygetus uplands. Village tavernas stand in the foothills above the city.

Stay a night in Kalamata before driving on, particularly if your next base is the Mani. The reasons are the waterfront promenade, the modest sandy beach at Verga and a long dinner at one of the harbour tavernas. Three nights in Kalamata alone is a stretch. One or two, as a stop on the way and a base for day trips in Messenia, is the right length.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Kalamata International (KLX) is the working airport of the southern Peloponnese. It is 40 minutes from Costa Navarino at Pylos, under two hours from Kardamyli and the Outer Mani, and two hours from Olympia. Seasonal flights connect it directly with London, Paris, Vienna and Geneva. Athens is three and a half hours away by motorway.

  2. The address

    Mandarin Oriental at Costa Navarino, in Pylos on Navarino Bay, is the closest pedigree base, 40 minutes from the airport. It sits on the Westin and Romanos masterplan but is run to the Mandarin standard. The Romanos stands next door under Marriott’s Luxury Collection colours. For the run, base yourself to the south.

  3. The Messene

    Ancient Messene lies 30 minutes north-west of the city, on the slope of Mount Ithome. The Theban general Epaminondas founded it in 369 BC to break Spartan rule. The Asclepieion, a sanctuary of the healing god Asclepius, and the Doric stadium are the main sights. The archaeologist Petros Themelis directed the excavation from 1986 until his death in 2023, and is buried at the site.

  4. The Megaron

    The Kalamata Dance Megaron on Artemidos Street is the largest cultural building in the Peloponnese. ORION built it and delivered it to the Municipality of Kalamata on a €10.7m contract assigned in 2006. It covers 6,000 square metres, with an auditorium of 682 seats over a central stage of 1,500 square metres. A glazed, transparent public foyer stands against the closed mass of the hall, so the activity inside can be read from the street.

  5. The PDO olive

    Elia Kalamatas, the table olive of the city, was registered as a Protected Designation of Origin on 20 June 1996. It is restricted to the Kalamon variety grown in the Messinia prefecture. The fruit cannot be picked green: the harvest is in November, by hand, and the olives go into wine vinegar or oil. Elsewhere the variety is sold under the lesser name ‘Kalamon’.

  6. The Kalamon fig

    The Kalamon fig is native to Messinia and is the regional dried fig: deep-red flesh, intensely sweet, dried in the sun without sulphite. It is a Smyrna-type variety, which needs the fig wasp Blastophaga psenes to set fruit. The crown-shaped pressed strings sold at the November markets are the regional cure, and the brokers ship them east to Athens and west to the United States.

  7. The liberation

    On 23 March 1821 Petrobey Mavromichalis brought 150 Maniots through the foothills. Theodoros Kolokotronis met him with 2,000 Messenians, and the Ottoman commander Suleiman Aga Arnaoutoglou surrendered without a shot. A doxology, a service of thanksgiving, sung by 24 priests at the Holy Apostles church marked the moment Kalamata became the first city freed in the war.

  8. The Senate

    In the days after 23 March 1821, the chieftains who met at Kalamata formed the Messenian Senate, the first administrative institution of revolutionary Greece. Joseph Balestra, a Corsican philhellene, drilled the first regular regiment. The city held the seat for weeks, before the war and the apparatus of government moved on.

  9. The Methoni

    Methoni Castle, an hour west on the south coast, is the largest Venetian fortress in the eastern Mediterranean. It was taken under treaty with Villehardouin in 1209 and held until 1500, when Bayezid II besieged it. The small octagonal Bourtzi tower stands on its own islet at the seaward tip, first a lighthouse and later an Ottoman prison. The stone bridge over the moat has 14 arches.

  10. The Battle

    The Battle of Navarino was fought in the bay at Pylos on 20 October 1827, the last major naval action ever fought entirely under sail. A British, French and Russian fleet under Codrington, de Rigny and Heyden destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at anchor. By the morning the Greek Republic, which had nearly collapsed, was saved.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Kalamata

    Kalamata’s marina and port lie southwest of the centre at the head of the Messenian Gulf, below the fourteenth-century Frankish castle the Villehardouins raised over the town. It is the largest harbour of Messenia and the southern Peloponnese, 20 minutes from the airport. A yacht lies on the long beachfront with the Taygetos mountains behind the city, and the Mani, Pylos and Messene are all within an easy day.

  2. Petalidi

    Petalidi is on the western shore of the gulf, 20 kilometres southwest of Kalamata and 25 kilometres east of Pylos: a small port and summer village, its square below the church of Agios Nikolaos, with a lighthouse and a park on the harbour front. A yacht lies off the town, with the olive country of Messenia behind it, in the quiet middle of the gulf’s west coast between the city and the castle at Koroni.

  3. Koroni

    Koroni is at the southwest tip of the Messenian peninsula, a town on a hill below its Venetian castle. With Methoni across the cape it was one of the two “eyes of the Republic” of Venice, which called it the receptacle of all its galleys bound for the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean), and the town once grew wealthy on the crimson dye of the cochineal. A yacht lies below the walls at the mouth of the gulf.

  4. Avia

    Avia is on the eastern shore southeast of Kalamata, where the coast begins to turn wild toward the Mani. It is a village of beaches below Paliochora, on the site of ancient Avia, the Ire named by Homer, which Cresphontes of Messene renamed for the nurse of Heracles’s line, and a temple of Asclepius once stood here. A yacht lies off the last easy shore before the tower-villages of the deep Mani begin.

Mythology

  1. The Andania Mysteries

    The Andania Mysteries were held in the Karnasian grove in Messenia, near the ruins of ancient Andania. Pausanias saw a grove of cypresses with statues of Apollo Karneios, Hagna and Hermes carrying a ram, and the surviving sacred law sets the rules for the procession and festival held on that ground.