Peloponnese, Greece

After a wonderful week on Planet Naxos, we came back to earth with a thud by arriving on the Greek mainland. Indeed, it’s as though we’ve arrived on another world. Dense traffic, hoards of people, and intense heat as the blazing sun reflects off stone and concrete. Our hotel was near the Plaka, which is a pedestrian mall of shops, restaurants and bars several kilometres long, and only recently beautified for the 2004 Athens Olympics. Only two minutes’ walk from our hotel, we could look up at the Acropolis with the famous Parthenon sitting on top, looking down over Athens like an omnipresent deity. There were only a few places in Athens that we visited while riding on a hop-on hop-off bus where the Parthenon could not be seen.

What's left of The Temple of Olympian Zeus, AD 131, in Athens. The column was blown down in a gale in 1852.

Two things quickly made an impression on us. Firstly, the graffiti. It seems that every available wall space in the city has been daubed with spray paint. Sometimes colourful, artful and pictorial, but usually just black scribble. Our taxi driver told us that it’s actually not illegal to write on Athens’ city walls. Very strange, and such a shame as it creates an ugly perspective for the city. Secondly, streetscapes are often interrupted by a fenced off area to quarantine an excavated piece of archaeology. When you stop to consider that those foundations or that wall or arch is over twenty centuries old, you realise that this is a very special place. It must be impossible to dig anywhere in Athens without exposing some kind of ancient artefact. People have been building homes and temples here for thousands of years. Our taxi driver told us that if a current building project exposes any archaeology in the ground, it must be reported to the Government, who will then confiscate the property and grant you land somewhere else. Consequently, you’ll find a lot of foundations will be dug and poured at night to avoid detection.

 

The two extremes of Athens - graffiti and ancient ruins, side-by-side.

Narrow streets of the Plaka, thriving with nightlife.

We’re now half-way through a four-day tour around the southern part of Greece that focusses on ancient Greece a few centuries BC. Driving across Pellepones, the large island to the west of Athens, we were surrounded by mountains covered in bare rock and sparse low bushes. The escarpments seem to have character, as if the rocks are speaking, telling us of the eons they’ve been looking down over this valley. Mountains can be seen in the distance, with each range having a different hue the further away it is. Occasional farm houses identify a rural property, usually surrounded by olive trees. There is no commercial cropping or grazing, there are only small plots of vegetables, orchards or vines, and the infrequent goats, cows, horses or chickens. There are many wind farms and banks of solar panels – there is plenty of wind and sun here to contribute energy to the grid.

the Theatre of Epidauros

The first historic site for us was the Theatre of Epidauros, a fantastically well preserved structure that still holds festival music and theatre after two thousand years. Built in the 3^rd century BC and seating 14,000 people, it still has amazing acoustics, and voices seem to carry around the amphitheatre, even heard from the highest seat. Then onto the ancient civilisation of Mycenae, and their famous citadel near Nafplion. We’re now going back 16 centuries BC, and our entrance was through a front gate constructed of massive stones with two carved lions overhead. It was a dramatic introduction to this hillside ancient city of remnant foundations. Nearby was the Treasury of Atreus, a massive tomb made by filing down stone blocks to create a smooth interior dome. The forty metre entry corridor was just jaw-dropping.

Above and below: the Treasury of Atreus.

Just a small part of the great city of Mycenae.