Nafplio

Nafplio is the right base for three days of archaeology in the Argolid. It is the most walkable town in the Peloponnese, and the four major ancient sites (Mycenae, Tiryns, Epidaurus and Argos) are within 40 minutes’ drive. Stay here, make day trips outward, and spend the evenings on the harbour rather than in a coach park.

Three fortifications make up the town’s skyline, and you can see all of them at once from the marina. Venetian engineers built the Palamidi between 1711 and 1714 as a final defensive position before the Ottomans retook the town. A stone staircase climbs to it. Local tradition counts 999 steps; the real figure is somewhat lower, depending on where you start. Plan the climb for first light. The older Acronauplia, on a lower spur, has Byzantine and Frankish layers and is now joined to a hotel and the upper town. The Bourtzi, on a rocky islet at the harbour mouth, was Venetian. Under the early Greek state it was briefly the home of the public executioner.

In 1829 Nafplio was named the seat of the new Greek government, and it held the role until 1834. The first national bank, the first newspaper and the first official coinage of the modern state all date from here. Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state, was assassinated on 9 October 1831 on the steps of the church of Agios Spyridon, at the foot of the upper-town stairs. People still point out the bullet hole in the doorpost. The Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation Museum, the better small museum in town, tells the wider story.

Stay in the old town, in the small lanes between Syntagma Square and the lower harbour. Eat at the bougatsa places in the morning, the fish tavernas on the harbour at lunch and the meze places in the back lanes at dinner. Stay three nights, or four if you are taking all four ancient sites slowly.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    A helicopter from Athens takes around half an hour to the helipad above town. By car, Nafplio is two hours from Athens by motorway via Corinth and Argos, and two and a half hours from Olympia through the central Peloponnese. The town has no airport of its own; Kalamata, two hours south, is the regional alternative.

  2. The address

    Amphitryon, on Spiliadou Street below the 3rd-century BC walls of Akronafplia, has 45 rooms with bay views that open onto the Bourtzi. It belongs to the Helios Hotels Group and is two minutes’ walk from Syntagma Square. With no hotel of Aman standard in town, it is the principal base.

  3. Karonis

    Karonis has distilled ouzo, tsipouro and mastika in copper stills in Nafplio for over a century, and the fourth and fifth generations of the family run it now, on the road up to the Palamidi, minutes from the old town. The house keeps its own museum, with the first still, the invoice from France and company papers back to 1880. The cherry liqueur, pressed from Arcadian fruit, is the one to take home.

  4. The Lion Gate

    At Mycenae, the Lion Gate of about 1250 BC is the only surviving Mycenaean monumental sculpture and the largest piece of Bronze Age stonework in the Aegean. A short walk downhill, the Treasury of Atreus, a beehive-shaped vaulted tomb of about 1300 BC that tradition calls Agamemnon’s, is the best preserved in Greece. One site ticket covers the citadel, the museum and the tomb.

  5. Tiryns

    Tiryns, 20 minutes east on the road to Argos, has the Cyclopean walls that gave the style its name. The limestone walls are up to 17 metres thick where the corbelled tunnels pass through, and are estimated to have stood 9 to 10 metres tall before they collapsed. UNESCO inscribed Mycenae and Tiryns together in 1999, and the site is worth an hour.

  6. The Papantoniou

    Ioanna Papantoniou founded the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation in 1974 in memory of her father, Vasilis. It holds around 50,000 objects of modern Greek material culture in a converted Papantoniou family house in the old town.

  7. The komboloi

    The Komboloi Museum, at 25 Staikopoulou Street in the old town, was founded in April 1998 by Aris Evangelinos and Rallou Gromitsari, who had been collecting since 1963. Its Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox and Greek prayer and worry beads date from 1550 to 1950. It is the only museum of its kind.

  8. The Nemea

    Nemea, 50 minutes north, is the red-wine appellation of the Argolid, and Agiorgitiko is the only grape variety permitted under its PDO, the EU protected designation of origin. The vineyards run from the valley floor to the slopes above, and the high-altitude vineyards set the standard: spicy wines with notes of plum, low in acidity, made for the cellar. The drive is worth a day.

  9. The Bourtzi

    The Bourtzi is the small fort the Venetians built in the bay in 1471 under the name Castel Pasqualigo. It reopened in August 2023 after a long restoration that added a lift to the main level. The 10-minute crossing leaves from the dockside near Filellinon Square, and the fortress opens daily, with seasonal hours.

  10. The Asklepieion

    The Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus, the main healing centre of the ancient Greek world, lies a short walk above the theatre. It holds the abaton, where dream cures were sought, the round tholos and the small museum with the surgical instruments. Allow half a day; the route follows a single low ridge through pines.

Anchorage Notes

  1. The town harbour

    Nafplio, Greece’s first modern capital, sits on a peninsula at the head of the Argolic Gulf, its bay closed by the moles (harbour walls) of the old town. The Palamidi fortress, the last great work of Venice overseas, stands on the 216-metre hill above, and the older Acronafplia holds the rock below it. The town port takes the leisure fleet in season, and a yacht lies there under three castles.

  2. Tolo

    Tolo, in the municipal unit of Asini, holds a sandy bay a few kilometres southeast of Nafplio. It is a fishing village that turned to summer visitors in the mid-twentieth century, with a long beach and warm water, and three islets lie in the bay before it: Koronisi close in, then Romvi and Daskaleio. A yacht lies off the beach or among the islets, the busiest resort water of the Argolic Gulf.

  3. Asine

    On the headland of Kastraki, between Tolo and the open gulf, stand the walls of ancient Asine, a Mycenaean port that grew rich on the trade of the Argolis and that Homer lists among the ships sent to Troy. Sparta broke it in the eighth century BC and its people escaped by sea to Messenia; archaeologists have dug here since 1922, and from 2020 found the remains of its ancient harbour under the water. A yacht lies off this drowned port.

  4. Kiveri

    Kiveri holds the western shore of the gulf, across the water from Nafplio: a village of oranges and olives with a small fishing fleet. Offshore are the Anavalos, submarine springs where cold fresh water wells up through the salt, the drowned outflow of the Argive plain. A yacht lies off this quiet west side, with the Arcadian mountains behind it and the city’s lights across the bay at night.

Mythology

  1. Hera

    At the Argive Heraion, Pausanias saw the huge gold-and-ivory Hera by Polycleitus, holding a pomegranate and a sceptre topped by a cuckoo. He was told that Zeus had once taken the bird’s shape so that the young Hera would catch it and keep it.

  2. Agamemnon

    At Mycenae in the Argolid, Pausanias saw a tomb said to be Agamemnon’s among the ruins. The gold mask named after him, now in the National Archaeological Museum, dates to the 16th century BC, long before the time linked with the Trojan War.

  3. Argus Panoptes

    Apollodorus places the watch of Argus at an olive tree in the grove of the Mycenaeans, where he keeps Io tied in the form of a cow. In the play by Aeschylus, the story also begins at Argos, where Io keeps the keys of the temple of Hera.

  4. Atreus

    At Mycenae, the large round tomb traditionally called the Treasury of Atreus carries the king’s name but does not prove a historical burial. Pausanias separately records underground treasuries and a grave of Atreus among the old landmarks of the city.

  5. Cassandra

    Among the ruins of Mycenae, inland of Nafplio, Pausanias saw a tomb of Cassandra and a grave shared by Teledamus and Pelops, whom he was told were her twin sons. The citadel standing there commands the Argolid plain and is named as Agamemnon’s kingdom, although Aeschylus sets the killing in the house at Argos across the same plain, and Pindar puts it at Amyclae in Laconia.

  6. Clytemnestra

    Mycenae, in the Argolid above Nafplio, is the ground this story is fixed to: the citadel Agamemnon came home to, and the place every version of his death is set at. Its walls and the gate crowned with lions still stand above the ruin field.

  7. Diomedes

    At Argos in the Argolid, Pausanias records a shrine of Athena Oxyderces, or Sharp-sighted, founded by Diomedes because she cleared the mist from his eyes at Troy. In the Iliad, Diomedes leads the force from Argos, Tiryns and the nearby cities.

  8. Orestes

    Mycenae is the royal home to which Orestes returns. Agamemnon has been killed there, and Orestes answers that murder by killing Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

  9. Palamedes

    The hill above Nafplio is named after Palamedes, son of Nauplius. The name belongs to the hill, and the present Palamidi fortress on it was built by the Venetians in the early eighteenth century.

  10. Perseus

    Pausanias heard two stories of how Perseus named the city: the cap (myces) fell from his sword there, or he drank with joy from water beneath a mushroom (also myces). He saw a gate topped by two lions, said like the wall of Tiryns to be the work of the Cyclopes, and a fountain in the ruins named Persea after Perseus.

  11. The Alkyonian Lake

    Ancient Lerna lies at modern Myloi, on the western side of the Argolid Gulf, and Lake Alkyonia is identified today in the village. Here Pausanias records that Dionysus went down to Hades, that the lake could not be sounded and that night rites were held which he would not describe.

  12. The Cyclopes

    Apollodorus and Strabo say Cyclopes built the walls of Tiryns, and Pausanias says they built the walls of Mycenae too. Both hilltop fortresses stand in the Argolid around Nafplio, and their huge stonework is still called Cyclopean.

  13. The Hydra

    At Lerna, on the gulf south of Argos, Pausanias was shown a plane tree said to grow over the Hydra’s home beside the spring of Amymone. He thought the Hydra a real water snake with one head, and named the poet Peisander of Camirus as the source of the many heads. Today the excavated ground there is linked with the same myth, though only a Middle Neolithic house stands to be seen.

  14. The Isthmian Games

    Heracles lived at Tiryns, beside Nafplio, when he ambushed the sons of Actor at Cleonae as they travelled under the Isthmian truce. Pausanias says the Eleans held the Argives answerable for the killing and pressed the Corinthians to shut them out of the Isthmian games. When that failed, the Elean woman Moline cursed her own people should they ever compete there, and in Pausanias’s day no athlete of Elis did.

  15. The Labours of Heracles

    In Apollodorus, the Pythia sends Heracles to Tiryns to serve Eurystheus for twelve years. There, after the first labour, a frightened Eurystheus shuts him out of the city and has him show the proof of each labour at the gates, and the first two labours on every list, the Nemean lion and the Lernaean hydra, both belong to the same stretch of the Argolid plain around the citadel.

  16. The Nemean Games

    The games were held in the valley of Nemea, in the Argolid hinterland inland from Nafplio, at the sanctuary of Nemean Zeus. Pausanias walked there from Cleonae, was shown the cave of the lion on the way, and found the grave of Opheltes fenced with stones and holding altars.

  17. The Nemean Lion

    On the Argolid ground inland from Nafplio, Hesiod places the lion’s attacks around Tretus, Nemea and Apesas. Apollodorus begins and ends the hunt at nearby Cleonae, where Molorchus waits 30 days for Heracles to return.