A visit to ancient sites in the Peloponnese

                   

Today we hired a car and driver (from the company Greek-Private Tours, for a day-long trip to visit ancient ruins in the northern part of the Peloponnese, on Corinth and Mycenae.  Our driver, Dimetrius, met us on one of the roads around the corner from the small lane where our apartment is located, and off we drove south from Athens.  I would recommend this company to others as a friend with extensive experience in Greece recommended the company to me.

Our first stop was at the Corinth Canal, dug out by a French company in the early 1890s, at around the same time as the Panama Canal.   In ancient times, Corinth had made its riches by being the site of a road across the isthmus separating Attica from the Peloponnese; otherwise merchant ships had to round the entire peninsula.  The canal allowed shipping to go directly from the Aegean to the Ionic Sea.  The solution did not, however, endure into the 2st century, because the very deep channel was dug much too narrowly, and the canal now serves primarily to aid pleasure boats and only the very smallest carriers of freight.

From here we drove to the site of ancient Corinth.  We paused first to look at the Glauke Fountain, named for the maiden of myth who was the victim of a poisoned peplos (dress) provided by the witch Medea to prevent her from marrying Jason (of the Argonauts fame), who was already married to Medea.  When her skin was burned by the dress, she could only be saved by falling into the fountain which extinguished the flames.

Then we admired from several angles the seven remaining columns of the Temple of Apollo

Temple of Apollo in Ancient Corinth

Temple of Apollo in Ancient Corinth

Temple of Apollo in Ancient Corinth

Unlike the Parthenon, these columns were solid rock, not a series of drums.

We passed by the South Stoa,

and then the Bema, a platform from which officials would have addressed the public

these are the ruins of the shops along the city’s western wall

Finally, we visited the museum that housed manhy of the artifacts recovered from the ruins, saving them from further deterioration from the elements

These pieces of the temple frieze show the labors of Herakles

and the battle of the Greeks against the Amazons

Here is Herakles with the Erymanthian Boar

Included were these votive terracotta replicas of small hands and small genitalia, features of our current president that were revealed during the debates for the 2016 republican presidential primary

While we were visiting the ruins of ancient Corinth, we kept noticing what appeared to be a wall running along an overlooking mountain

When we left the ruins, we headed up the mountain in that direction, hoping to visit the castle atop “Acrocorinth,” which operated as the Acropolis of Corinth since archaic times, and eventually was fortified during the Byzantine Empire and maintained successively by  the Frankish Principality of Achaea, by the Venetians and by the Ottoman Turks.  Here is the impressive entrance, which formed only the third line of defense of the fortress behind:

We hiked up the stones worn smooth by countless tourist treads to the second and then the first and inner line of defense

Inside that final line of defense was a small church

and, at the very top, a temple of Aphrodite to which none of us climbed

There was a great view of the surrounding area from the battlements of the final line of defense

We had lunch at a large dining hall selected by our driver – the food was inexpensive and came quickly, but otherwise was unremarkable, and then headed to our major destination, the ruins of Archaic Mycenae.

The ancient city was surrounded by a wall constructed out of enormous blocks of stone

The approach was through the Lion Gate

The Lion Gate at Mycenae

Seen here from inside the walls

The first construction we saw inside was this granary

and then this grave circle, where the Mycenaen royalty were buried in shaft graves along with treasures that we would be seeing two days later at the National Archeological Museum

we proceeded past the ruins of the city’s cult center, where shrines were located

the ramp house,

and the propylon (entrance) to the palace

finally reaching the palace itself

On the slopes back downward from the palace, in the northwest corner of the site, were the shops where the artisans had lived and worked

a houses called “three house of columns”

and two buildings named only “gamma” and “delta”

There was a final extension of the city walls in this northwest portion of the site

for the purpose of protecting access to an underground water cistern, buried deep in the hill

The architecture of the entrance was unusual for its time, including this archway





We walked back toward the entrance from here, passing the northern gate to the city

It was getting late, but I took a quick spin through the museum to look at the artifacts recovered from the site, including these lovely miniature figurines

and some larger ones

Most of the materials recivered from the site were to be seen two days later at the National Archeological Museum.

Our final stop was at “The Treasury of Atreus,” a sensatilonal beehive-shaped tomb built into a hillside a few minutes drive from the main city site.  Schliemann was convinced that this was the grave of Agamemnon; the contents were looted, but the amazing structure remains.

At this point, although the touring company had placed the city of Napflio on our itinerary as a possible place to grab a coffee and a dessrt and enjoy a view of the beachfront, we had taken significantly more time than allocated visiting the Acrocorinth, so we decided to sacrifice Napflion and head back to Athens.

We had another excellent dinner in one of the restaurants in a courtyard running diwn from Thespidos street, the Diogenes Restaurant