Mycenae, Nafplio & Epidaurus

The fullest day we run: three thousand years of the Peloponnese in one loop. Agamemnon’s citadel in the morning, a Venetian harbour town for lunch, and an afternoon in the theatre where a whisper carries to the back row.

Tour highlights

• The Lion Gate of Mycenae
• The Treasury of Atreus (beehive tomb)
• Grave Circle A, where the “Mask of Agamemnon” was found
• The Archaeological Museum of Mycenae
• Nafplio old town and Syntagma Square
• The Palamidi fortress and Bourtzi islet
• The Theatre of Epidaurus
• The Sanctuary of Asklepios

About this journey

Mycenae gave its name to an entire civilisation. You enter as everyone has entered for three and a half thousand years, through the Lion Gate — two lionesses carved in relief above a lintel, the oldest monumental sculpture in Europe and the only Bronze Age monument of its kind still standing in Greece. Just inside lies Grave Circle A, where Heinrich Schliemann dug in 1876 and lifted a gold funerary mask he famously — and wrongly — attributed to Agamemnon.

A few hundred metres downhill is the Treasury of Atreus, built around 1300 BC: a corbelled dome 13.5 metres across and 13.2 high, entered through a doorway whose lintel block weighs something like 120 tonnes. It remained the largest dome in the world for over a thousand years, until the Pantheon in Rome.

Then Nafplio, which was the first capital of the modern Greek state, and still looks it: Venetian balconies, marble streets, bougainvillea, the little Bourtzi fortress sitting in the middle of the harbour, and the enormous Palamidi above — eight self-contained bastions raised by the Venetians in a startling three years, between 1711 and 1714. There are 911 steps if you insist; we can also drive you to the top gate.

The day ends at Epidaurus. The theatre, built in the 4th century BC for the sanctuary of the healing god Asklepios, seats about 14,000 and has acoustics that still defeat modern engineers: research has shown the corrugated limestone seats filter out low-frequency crowd and wind noise while reflecting the higher frequencies of the human voice back to the audience. Stand in the centre of the orchestra, drop a coin, and the top row hears it.

Good to know