Three days in Nafplio: Greece's first capital, and the Argolid around it

A Venetian harbour town to sleep in, a Bronze Age citadel and the best preserved theatre in the ancient world within half an hour, and a fortress staircase on the last morning.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Nafplio
Places
8 across 3 days
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Nafplio is where the Greek state started. When the war of independence ended, this was the capital, the first governor lived and was shot here, and the first parliament met in a converted mosque off the main square. In 1833 the government moved to Athens and Nafplio has been quietly getting on with things ever since, which is why it still looks the way it does.

The old town is a small grid of neoclassical houses between two fortresses and the sea, with marble paving, bougainvillea and no traffic to speak of. Athenians come for the weekend. It is the one town in the Peloponnese that is worth a trip on its own account rather than as a base.

It is also, conveniently, a base. Within half an hour's drive are the citadel the Homeric kings ruled from, a theatre from the 4th century BC that still sells out in summer, and a Bronze Age palace almost inside the suburbs. Two nights covers the town and the two great sites without rushing either.

Highlights

  • The Lion Gate at Mycenae, the oldest monumental sculpture in Europe, still standing where it was set around 1250 BC
  • The theatre at Epidaurus, where a coin dropped on the floor of the orchestra can be heard from the back row
  • A Venetian sea fort on its own rock in the harbour, five minutes out by boat
  • 857 steps up to Palamidi, and the whole Argolic gulf from the top

Where to stay

Nafplio, two nights

The town sits on a spit under a rock, with a fortress on top of the rock, another on an island in the bay and a third, the oldest, wrapped around the hill behind. Nobody built here for the view. It was the best defended harbour on this coast, which is why the Franks, the Venetians and the Ottomans each took it in turn and each left something behind.

What that produced is a centre that looks Italian at street level, with Ottoman fountains at the corners and Orthodox churches that were mosques a lifetime before the houses went up. Walking it at random for an hour is the right way to start.

Day by day

Day 1 in Nafplio

The old town, and the fort in the harbour

Nothing today is more than four minutes from Syntagma Square, which is a good enough reason to arrive, drop the bags and start walking.

Two buildings on the square explain how Greece began: the hall where the young state's parliament first met, and, a street away, the church where the man running the country was shot on his way to Sunday service in 1831.

Then take the boat out to the island fort before dinner and look back at the town from the water, which is the view on every postcard and better in person.

  1. 17:00

    Vouleftikon

    Visit

    An Ottoman mosque on the south side of Syntagma Square that became the chamber of the young state's parliament from 1825. Plain, square, and the room where a state was argued into existence.

  2. 17:45

    St Spyridon church

    Visit

    Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of independent Greece, was shot on the steps of this small church in the autumn of 1831 by two members of a clan he had jailed. The mark left by the bullet is still in the wall by the door, and the lane is named after him.

  3. 18:30

    Bourtzi

    Nature

    The Venetians began fortifying this rock in the harbour mouth around 1400 and chained it to the shore to close the port. It has since been a fort, a refuge for the government, the residence of the town executioner when nobody would live near him, and for a while a hotel. Small boats run out from the quay and the crossing takes five minutes.

  4. 20:30

    Dinner off Syntagma Square

    Eat

    Walk one street back from the water. The tavernas in the lanes behind the square cook better and charge less than the terraces facing the boats.

With more time: The Arvanitia path runs from the end of the town around the base of the cliff, a flat kilometre of sea and rock that takes twenty minutes and is the best walk in the town at dusk. Carry on for another half hour and it reaches Karathona, a long sandy bay with a couple of beach bars.

Day 2 in Nafplio

Mycenae in the morning, Epidaurus in the afternoon

The two sites lie on opposite sides of the Argolid, about forty five minutes apart, and doing both in one day works if you take the citadel at opening time and the theatre in the late afternoon when the heat has gone out of the day.

Mycenae dominated the Aegean for centuries and then vanished so completely that classical Greeks thought it was a myth. Schliemann dug it up in 1876, found gold masks in the shaft graves and announced he had looked on the face of Agamemnon, which was wrong by about three centuries but made the site famous.

Epidaurus was a hospital, or as near as antiquity had one: a sanctuary of the healing god where the sick slept in the halls waiting for a dream, with a running track, baths, a guest house and, above all of it, the theatre.

  1. 08:30

    The Lion Gate

    Historic

    Two lionesses facing a column over a lintel said to weigh twenty tonnes, set into walls so massive that later Greeks assumed giants had built them. Inside the gate, the circle of royal shaft graves is where the gold went to Athens from; what is displayed at the site museum here is copies.

  2. 10:15

    The Treasury of Atreus

    Historic

    Five minutes back down the road, a corridor thirty six metres long cut into the hillside leading to a beehive chamber fourteen metres across and almost as high, built around 1250 BC. Nothing on earth had a wider dome until the Pantheon, well over a thousand years later. Stand in the middle and speak.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch on the way east

    Eat

    The road between the two sites passes Argos and a string of orange groves. Eat in one of the villages rather than at either site, where the options are a car park cafe.

  4. 15:00

    Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus

    Historic

    Built into the hillside in the 4th century BC, extended two centuries later, and holding fourteen thousand people on stone that has barely moved since. The acoustics are the famous part and they are not exaggerated: a match struck on the floor of the orchestra carries to the top row. Climb up and get somebody to try it.

With more time: The sanctuary buildings below the theatre are included in the ticket and almost empty: the guest house where pilgrims slept, the baths, and the foundations of the round building nobody has satisfactorily explained. On the way back, the Bronze Age bridge at Arkadiko is signposted off the old Epidaurus road and is the oldest bridge still standing in Europe, and you can walk across it.

Day 3 in Nafplio

Up Palamidi, then the palace on the way out

Do the staircase first thing, before the sun is on the rock face. The fortress above the town is Venetian, and the Ottomans took it within a year of its being finished. The climb to it is the thing everybody here tells you about.

Then, on the road out towards Argos and Athens, a Mycenaean palace sitting in flat farmland four kilometres from town, which almost nobody stops at and which has the most impressive walls in Greece.

  1. 08:30

    Palamidi

    Historic

    The Venetians built it between 1686 and 1714 as eight linked bastions, each able to hold out if the others fell, and it was reckoned impregnable until a Greek raiding party climbed in one night in 1822. Locals will tell you the staircase from the town has 999 steps; the honest count is 857. Inside are the cells where Kolokotronis, the general who won the war, was later imprisoned by the government he had fought for.

  2. 11:30

    Tiryns

    Historic

    A Mycenaean citadel on a low ridge in the plain, contemporary with Mycenae and better preserved, with corbelled galleries inside walls up to eight metres thick that you can still walk through. Mythology made it the home Heracles returned to between his labours. Fifteen minutes from town by bike along the old railway line.

  3. 13:30

    Bus or drive out

    Travel

    Buses to Athens leave from the station at the edge of the old town and take about two hours. By car it is the same, and the motorway starts at Corinth.

With more time: If the legs have had enough, the road up the back of Palamidi lets you drive to the gate and walk down the steps instead. In the town, there is a museum devoted entirely to worry beads, which sounds like a joke and is genuinely interesting about a habit you will see everywhere in Greece.

Before you go

Where to stay

Inside the old town, without question. It is compact enough that anywhere within it is five minutes from everywhere else, the buildings are the point, and the streets are too narrow for cars, which means quiet nights. Rooms in the restored neoclassical houses cost more than the modern hotels on the road in and are worth it.

Park at the free harbour car park and walk in; dragging a suitcase across marble paving is the local rite of passage. The newer town to the east has the supermarkets and the bus station and none of the charm.

Getting there and around

From Athens it is about 150 kilometres and under two hours by car. Buses run a dozen or more times a day from the Kifissos terminal and take around two hours; there is a direct connection from the airport bus if you are arriving and leaving the country the same way. Trains to Nafplio have been suspended for years, so do not plan around them.

In the town itself you walk. The council keeps a rack of free bicycles by the town hall, which is the easy way to reach the beaches and the Mycenaean palace east of town.

For the day trips, a hire car makes the difference between one relaxed day and two frustrating half days. Buses do reach both sites, but the timetables are built for locals rather than for a round trip, and a taxi to Epidaurus and back costs more than a day's rental.

The sites

Mycenae and Epidaurus are both open all day and both punishing in the middle of it, with almost no shade at either. Go early to one and late to the other.

A combined ticket covers Mycenae's citadel, its tombs and its museum. Epidaurus is a separate ticket that includes the sanctuary of Asclepius spread out below the theatre, which most people walk past on their way back to the car park.

In July and August the theatre stages Greek drama on Friday and Saturday nights as part of the summer festival. Tickets are sold in Athens and at the gate, buses run out from Athens for performances, and watching a play in the building it was written for is a very different experience from visiting it at two in the afternoon.

Eating

Syntagma Square and the streets running off it are where the town eats, and standards are high because Athenian weekenders would not tolerate otherwise. The waterfront places along Bouboulinas charge for the view.

The Argolid grows much of the citrus in Greece and a great deal of its wine. Agiorgitiko, the red grape of Nemea half an hour north, is soft, dark and cheap by the carafe.

Most people see the Argolid from a coach seat: Mycenae before lunch, the theatre after it, back in Athens by seven. It works, and it misses the point, which is that the region is small enough to live in for a few days rather than tick off.

Sleeping in Nafplio is what changes it. The sites become a morning's drive rather than an expedition, and the evenings belong to a harbour town that was briefly the capital of a country and has been comfortable about it ever since.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Nafplio worth a stay or just a day trip from Athens?
A stay. Day trips from Athens give you two hours in the town after four hours in a coach, which is enough for the square and not for the fortress, the harbour fort or either of the great sites nearby. Two nights turns the same journey into a proper short break.
Can I do Mycenae and Epidaurus without a car?
You can reach each of them by bus, but not comfortably on the same day: the services are timed for people who live there and the return options in the afternoon are thin. A rental car for one day, or a guided day tour from Nafplio, costs less than the time you would lose.
How hard is the climb up Palamidi?
857 steps, cut into the rock, with no shade and a handrail for part of it. Reasonably fit people take half an hour going up and stop twice. In July do it before nine or after six, or drive round to the upper gate and walk down instead.
When is the best time to visit?
April to June and September to October. Spring in the Argolid is green and full of citrus blossom, and both archaeological sites are exposed enough that midsummer is genuinely hard work. The town itself is busiest at Greek weekends year round, so a midweek stay is cheaper and quieter.
What else is within reach?
A great deal. Ancient Corinth and the canal are an hour north on the way back to Athens, the Nemea wine villages are half an hour away, and Hydra and Spetses are reachable by hydrofoil from the coast nearby. Copy the three days into your own trip and add whichever of those you have time for.