The Peloponnese, Nafplio, Mycenae and Monemvasia

The Peloponnese hangs from the rest of mainland Greece like a hand, and it holds a remarkable amount of history. In a few days you can move from the citadel of the Bronze Age kings who fought at Troy in Homer's telling, to a theatre built in the fourth century BC, to the town where modern Greece first set up its government, to a Byzantine city on a rock in the sea. The distances are short. The centuries are not.

Mycenae and Epidaurus

The oldest of these places is Mycenae, a citadel on a hill in the Argolid. In Homer it is the city of Agamemnon, the king who led the Greeks to Troy. Visitors enter, as people have for more than three thousand years, through the Lion Gate, a massive doorway whose great stone lintel carries a relief of two lions, or perhaps lionesses, standing on either side of a column. It has been there, more or less undamaged, since around 1250 BC.

In 1876 Heinrich Schliemann dug into the circle of royal graves just inside the gate and found, among much else, a gold funeral mask, which he attributed to Agamemnon. It was not his. The mask is now dated several centuries earlier than any Trojan war could have been, but the name stuck, and the "Mask of Agamemnon" is one of the best-known objects in Greek archaeology.

Not far away, in a fold of wooded hills, is the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus, the god of healing, and with it a theatre that is often called the most perfect of all the ancient Greek theatres. It was built in the late fourth century BC, to a design that the ancient writer Pausanias credited to Polykleitos the Younger, and its acoustics are famous. Guides like to stand in the orchestra and tear a sheet of paper or drop a coin, and the sound reaches the back rows without help. In 1988 the sanctuary was inscribed as a World Heritage Site, for the perfection of its proportions and its sound.

Nafplio, the first capital

Nafplio, on the Argolic Gulf, is to my mind the most elegant town in the region. After the Greek War of Independence, it was the first capital of the modern Greek state, until the government moved to Athens in 1834, and it still has something of the air of a small capital.

Two fortresses watch over it. On the high rock above the town is the Palamidi, a Venetian fortress of the eighteenth century, reached on foot by a long flight of steps said to number 999, though people who count them tend to come in lower. In the harbour, on its own islet, is the little castle of the Bourtzi, begun by the Venetians in the fifteenth century.

Monemvasia and Mystras

In the far south-east, joined to the mainland only by a causeway, is Monemvasia. Its name is usually explained as meaning "single entrance", or the city of the single approach, and it is exactly that: a great rock rising from the sea, with one way in. It was founded in the sixth century as a refuge from invasions, and the town on the rock is a place of stone houses, churches and lanes.

Inland, near Sparta, is Mystras, a ruined Byzantine city of palaces, churches and monasteries, inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1989 as an exceptionally well-preserved example of a late Byzantine city.

Tours that cross the Peloponnese

Explore Worldwide's twelve-night Peloponnese Explorer is the one that reaches all of these places. Its itinerary includes Athens, Epidavros, Nafplion and Mycenae, then the Mani Peninsula, Gythio, Monemvasia, Cape Tenaro, Girolimenas and Vathia, and Mystras and Pylos. It has departures in April, May, June, September and October.

Just You's seven-night Athens, Olympia and the Corinth Coast includes Epidaurus, Nafplio and Mycenae, with Athens and Plaka, Nafpaktos, Olympia and Delphi. It does not go as far south as Monemvasia.

Just You's fifteen-night Greece and Turkiye – Wonders of the Aegean combines the Peloponnese with the Aegean. Its places include Athens, Kalambaka, Nafpaktos, Delphi, Mycenae, Nafplio and Epidaurus in Greece, then Samos, and Kusadasi, Ephesus, Selcuk and Çanakkale in Turkey.

Whichever route you take, try to see Mycenae early in the day, before the heat, and keep an evening for Nafplio. It is the place to sit by the sea and think about everything you have seen.