Mycenae, Epidaurus and Nafplio in a Day

Mycenae

The citadel of the Bronze Age kingdom that Homer made Agamemnon's, on a ridge between two hills, inside cyclopean walls of blocks so large that later Greeks assumed giants had laid them. You enter through the Lion Gate, the oldest monumental sculpture in Europe: two lionesses flanking a column above the lintel, carved about 1250 BC. Inside are Grave Circle A, where Schliemann dug up the gold now in the National Archaeological Museum, the palace foundations on the summit and a cistern cut down through the rock.

The Treasury of Atreus

A kilometre down the road and on the same ticket: a beehive tomb with a corbelled dome about thirteen metres high and a doorway lintel weighing something over a hundred tonnes. It was the largest dome in the world for roughly fifteen hundred years. A surprising number of day trips drive past it.

Epidaurus

The sanctuary of Asclepius, the healing god — a hospital, a spa and a temple complex where the sick slept in the abaton hoping for a curative dream. What survives best is the theatre of about 340 BC, seating fourteen thousand, and its acoustics are genuinely extraordinary: a coin dropped on the orchestra floor is audible in the back row. Guides demonstrate it and it works.

The site museum is on the same ticket.

Nafplio

A harbour town under a Venetian fortress, the first capital of independent Greece from 1823 to 1834, with a small castle on an islet in the middle of the bay. Day trips stop here for an hour, which is enough for lunch and the waterfront and not enough for the Palamidi fortress above it — that is nine hundred and ninety-nine steps, and a separate trip.

The route

Two hours south-west from Athens across the Corinth Canal, Mycenae first while it is cool, Nafplio for lunch, Epidaurus in the afternoon, and back. Some trips reverse it and some add Ancient Corinth at €15, which adds a stop and forty-five minutes.

When it is unpleasant

Mycenae is a ridge with no shade and the walk up to the palace is steep; in July at midday it is genuinely hard work. The theatre at Epidaurus is a stone bowl facing the sun. This is a spring or autumn day trip by preference, and in summer the earliest departure you can get.

Is it a first-trip day?

Honestly, no. On three or four nights in Athens the city itself and either Delphi or Cape Sounion come first. The Argolid is what you do on a second visit, or on a fifth or sixth night, or if the Bronze Age is specifically what you came for.

It is a very good day; it is not the first one.

Doing it yourself

A hire car makes this an easy day — the three sites are within an hour of each other and the roads are good — and it is the one Argolid arrangement that lets you stop at the Treasury of Atreus and climb the Palamidi. Public transport between the three is possible and slow, and not something we would attempt in a day.