Ancient Corinth

Under an hour from Athens and a different world: a canal cut through solid rock, one of the oldest standing temples in Greece, and the marketplace where Saint Paul stood trial. A short day that covers three eras without hurrying.

Tour highlights

• The Corinth Canal (completed 1893)
• The Temple of Apollo — seven standing Archaic columns
• The Roman Forum and the Bema of Saint Paul
• The Peirene Fountain
• The Archaeological Museum of Ancient Corinth
• Acrocorinth, the 575 m fortress above the city
• The Lechaion Road
• Views over the Saronic and Corinthian gulfs

About this journey

The first stop is the one nobody expects to enjoy as much as they do. The Corinth Canal was finished in 1893, cutting a six-kilometre channel through the isthmus — an idea attempted by the tyrant Periander, then by Nero, who is said to have struck the first blow with a golden pickaxe before his workforce of six thousand Jewish prisoners was recalled. The walls rise almost eighty metres above the water and the whole thing is barely wide enough for a small ship.

Ancient Corinth itself controlled that isthmus, and grew immensely rich on it. The Temple of Apollo, built around 550 BC, still shows seven monolithic Doric columns — each cut from a single block of limestone, over seven metres tall — making it one of the very few Archaic temples left standing anywhere in Greece.

Around it spreads the Roman city, refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC after Rome destroyed the Greek one. Excavations by the American School of Classical Studies, running since 1896, have uncovered the agora, shops, baths, porticoes and the Peirene Fountain. On one side of the forum stands the bema — the raised platform where, according to Acts, Saint Paul was brought before the proconsul Gallio during the eighteen months he spent preaching here.

Above everything looms Acrocorinth, a 575-metre limestone crag fortified in turn by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Venetians and Ottomans. If you have the legs for it, the walk up through three successive gates rewards you with one of the great views in the Peloponnese.

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