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Map of the Eastern Peloponnese 

Map of Western Peloponnese

Map of Western Sterea Ellada

Map of Southern Sterea Ellada

Map of Northern Epiros

Map of Attika

Almost forty years had passed since Gerhard and I had explored the Peleponnes first. I felt old enough to show those places to Barbara. Could the high of 1953 be reproduced?  Would I destroy these memories by covering them with new experiences? These questions lingered in my mind, when we arrived in Athens. But the magic of Greece proved even greater than before. By now I knew more about the dark aspects of classical Greece, which I had only vaguely sensed in 1953-54. In some places the electricity of the blood-soaked ground made my hair stand on end. I spent weeks after our return to find a way to make the underground forces behind Delphi and Bassai, of the Heraion in the Argolid and Mykene visible in drawings. So, these pictures are darker than those of the islands - a fact I only noticed now, when I put them together side by side... For a long meditation on this aspect of Greece, see On the Way to Arkadia.

Daphni

Daphni, mosaic of Christ Pantokrator in the dome (11^th century)

We rented a small Honda in Athens, and drove west. The Moni of Daphni, at the outskirts of Athens, was finally being restored. Regrettably the Ministry of Archeological Services of Greece had removed some cherished additions to the church, like the small Ionian capital in the wall to the left - a gentleman from the ministry supervising the restorations of the mosaics, whom I asked about it, begged me to send him my photo of this charming addition, they had no such document from earlier days! - but the scaffolding inside allowed for some unusual views....  

 Metamorphosis, Christ's Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor in one of the corners of the ceiling, is one of the most beautiful early Byzantine mosaics (11^th century AD).

Heraion Akragas - Perkhora

The Heraion Akragas, near Perkhora at the tip of the Gerania Peninsula, across the Gulf from Korinth., is, together with the Heraion of the Argolis, one of the oldest Greek sites. But hardly anybody ever visits it.  

 The small bay of the Heraion, where the pilgrims arrived by boat. The foundations of the temple are at the right.

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 The oldest Greek sites have been sacred for millennia, long before the Dorians from the north supplanted the cult of the Great Goddess with their new Gods. Like in Tibet to this day, these sanctuaries were characterized by (in Tibetan) rangchung - natural manifestations of the earth - here the head of the Goddess between her breast. In the cleavage is a spring which feeds a deep cistern surrounded by a small stand of trees.... Of course, Barbara went for a swim in the warm harbor basin. I am no friend of unknown waters....

 Half an hour from Perkhora is the bridge across the Corinthian canal, through which Gerhard and I came in 1953.

Argolid Heraion

 Greece is so small, an hour later, across some low hills, we reached the Argolid, the place of many of the old myths. Above is the infrequently visited Heraion of the Argolis. The low hill in the distance is the castle of Argos, and the Argolid Gulf is dimly visible to its left. Of the two temples of Hera at this site only the foundations remain - and the legend of the priestess who burned the main temple down in the fifth century. It was one of the richest and most powerful sanctuaries in Greece.

 Looking northwest from the Heraion, the Kyllini and the mountains of the Peleponnes can be seen, where Herakles killed the Stymphalian Birds.

Tyrins   

 Barbara on top the acropolis of Tyrins which rises among olive groves, farm houses, and vineyards, along the road south to Navplion.

 Resting in the shade of Tyrin's cyclopean walls

 A new wave of blond northern invaders before the walls of Tyrins - on powerful motorcycles instead of horses.

 Mykene 

The upper Argolid and the Peloponnesian mountains from the stronghold of Mykene in the evening light.

 ...and on the wall of Klytemnestra's bathroom where Agamemnon was slaughtered - now as then in the shadow of Mount Zakha, the sacred head of the Goddess.....

Leonidi 

 I always wanted to drive along the Peloponnesian shore of the Argolid Gulf. We did that this time from Argos to Leonidi, where we climbed into the mountains to Kosmas, an interesting mountain village, still unexplored, from which one has great views on the Eurotas valley, the Taÿgetos, and the area around Sparta. Silly, but time was pressing. Sparta turned out to be uninteresting. We would stay in Mystras.   

 The wild mountains above Leonidi

Mystras

The Frankish castle and the Pantanassa Monastery (1428), the best preserved church in Mystras.

Mystrás is a Frankish foundation: in 1249 during the 4^th Crusade, Guillaume de Villehardouin built the a castle on top of the commanding hill. For 200 years it was the heart of the Morea, the medieval name for the Peloponnisos and the bastion and capital of the Katakoutsenos (1348-84) and Palaiologos (1348-1460), the last Greek-Byzantine emperors (Despots of the Morea), until it fell into Turkish hands 7 years after the fall of Constantinople. In 1462 Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini tried in vain to conquer the fortified town, the Venetians under Francesco Morosini were more successful in 1687. Under Venetian protection it became a flowering trade center, until the Turks re-conquered it in 1715. It remained Turkish until the War of Independence (1825) when the Greek revolutionaries burned it down - it never recovered thereafter.

Because of this checkered history the surviving churches and monasteries, most of which the Turks left in the hands of Christian monks, date from the 15^th century.. Their interiors are painted with large and important late-Byzantine murals, which, as elsewhere in Greece, are often in poor condition.  

 For a plan of Mystras click here.

 The Perivleptos Monastery (outside-the-walls) (mid-14^th century?) may have replaced an older sanctuary in a cave behind it,

which would explain its location in a rocky niche outside the city walls.  

 The tower is of an earlier date (perhaps 13^th century).

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 while its murals seem of the late 14^th century. They have recently been stabilized.

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 Perivleptos murals

 A view from the upper hillside onto the church of Evangelistria (early 15^th century?) which is surrounded by melancholic cemeteries and ossuaries.

 The garden of the nuns at the Pantanassa.

 The chimneys of the nuns and the valley below.

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The oldest church of Mystrás, the Mitropolis (Aghios Demetrios) (1291) with murals of the 14^th century.

 Murals in the Pantanassa Monastery (?). We spent only one strenuous day exploring the steep terrain and its churches. I definitely have to go back to Mystras with more knowledge and a better camera....

 The well near the entrance to the city.

Ypsous or Stemnitsa 

 Ypsous - high-up-there, was the Greek name of this pretty, ancient village. In the late middle ages Slavic immigrants settled here, who gave the place the name of Stemnitsa. In 1991 it boasted a beautiful small hotel, with a wonderful host, who could tell great stories (for the stories click on On the Way to Arcadia). Unfortunately the place seems to have lately been converted into an expensive ($200-300/double!) country club - try Hotel Dimitsana** in nearby Dimitsana.

 Anyway, several hundred meters below Ypsous the Gorge of the Lousios cuts through the limestone formations, in which, according to Karl Götz, a German friend, hang three mysterious monasteries, which I wanted to see.

 We made our way to the nearest one the Moni of Ioannis Prodromos. The gate was closed, the monks were sleeping.

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 Our host had told us an involved story, that Leda, the nymph, had her sanctuary in a very old cave at the bottom of the canyon, where Zeus had visited her in the form of a swan and begot Helena(!).... I raised my eye brows in disbelieve. Yes, he protested, a German tourist told him that Pausanias this story.... and he continued to tell me another fable about Pausanias having spent his last years on a farm near Ypsous!! - I later re-read my Pausanias (200 BC), he reports no story of Leda and the swan in the Lousios Gorge. However Pausanias calls the Lousios, the coldest river in Greece. And that Barbara confirms is true! We climbed down into the gorge and dutifully found the nymph's cave dotted with votive niches and a very strong karst spring.... And while I sat in the cave expecting the swan to descend, Barbara took a refreshing bath in the icy waters of the Lousios.

 When we had climbed back to Ioannis Prodromos, the monks had woken up, and we spent an hour on their flying balcony recovering from the exertion. - Way in the distance, at the upper end of the gorge one could see the remaining two monasteries, completely overgrown in inaccessible, wild country. How had Karl reached them?

The Apollo Temple at Bassai

Bassai, the high point of Gerhard's and my trip in 1953, is only a little more than an hour by car from Ypsous. - Can you imagine my surprise, when we found this huge tent in place of the temple? At first I thought it was a new Hilton hotel, then that Christo had done a new wrapping... - None of these, underneath the tent hid the temple! - An earthquake had badly damaged the building and the Greek Archeological Service with the help of the European Community was restoring the damage. I was terribly disappointed...

...until, on reflection, I made peace with this modern sculpture: an Olympic Sail Ship ready to take off from the center of the Peleponnes ! And since the goats of Arcadia had vanished, the landscape had regrown more beautiful than ever.

  The Olympic Sail Ship close up.

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On Barbara's wish we spent another day in Bassai and finally searched for the older sanctuary on Mt. Kotillon, which Pausanias mentions. It was a small temple to Artemis and Aphrodite, the goddess who represent the virginal aspects of the Great Goddess in Greek mythology. Only the foundations inside a large megaron on top of the low mountain remain, but its direction is also to the south like the bigger and later Apollo temple below. In fact, this small Artemis-Aphrodite temple is the key to the understanding of the architectural and conceptual mysteries of the Apollo temple, which in the following months I spent much sleuthing on.

And here is a picture taken from Mt. Kotillon of Mt. Lykaios, where Zeus in his wolf incarnation was venerated, the key to the other half of the mystery of the Apollo temple... - Pausanias already shuddered, the darkest aspects of Greece crossing the middle of supposedly pastoral Arcadia.....

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Dodona

One morning we discovered that I had hurried too much, we would have a whole extra day before we would have to return to Athens. After much thinking I decided to drive to Dodona way north in the Epiros, where Cornelius had spent a night under the oak trees in which Zeus' Raven Oracle had cawed its enigmatic pronouncements.

 The only discernable building surviving in the mountain valley of Dodona is the splendid theater of the sanctuary, the oaks and the oracle are left to one's imagination, but the spirit of place is impressive enough.

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 Ioannina

 We spent the night in the modern town of Ioannina, the capital of the Epiros. Mercifully out of sight Ioannina is hidden in the distance on the opposite shore of its moody lake.

Following Gerhard's and my tracks we drove across the Pindos to Trikala, and from there south to Delphi

A shrine along the way across the Pindos mountains. 

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 Sheep in the clouds near the pass above Metsovo, which is barely visible in the distance.

 Delphi

After my stay at Delphi with Gerhard in 1954 Barbara and I once visited it by bus from Athens. We knew the place well and could leisurely explore its best aspects. For a longer exploration of Delphi click here.

What struck me most this time was the seeming insignificance of the site. The feared, powerful sacred district hangs suspended on one side of an enormous mountain megaron. From the distance one can hardly detect it. Of course, the once gleaming, white-washed temples and treasure houses, which Pausanias described, have long reverted to the dark color of their native stone. If anything marks the spot, it is the sheer, precipitous rock formation of the Phaidriades (to the right on this photo) and the deep cleft of the Kastalian Spring, the oldest parts of this millennia-old sacred site. I even argue that the Pythia, whose "cave" no one has been able to locate with certainty, actually sat at the deep end of the Kastalian cleft...

 Delphi, the Apollo temple and the theater looking east. The Phaidriades are on the left behind the cypress.

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The columns of the Apollo temple in the evening light

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 In the evening, the archeological district being closed, we clambered steeply up to this spot high above the sacred precinct with a magnificent view of the Pleistos valley, Itea, and the sea. We were completely alone except for an American jogger coming down from the mountain....

 Sunset over Itea from the roof of our guesthouse.

 Osios Lukas

Having a car made it possible to stop at Osios Lukas - blessed Lukas, not the saint - on our way back to Athens. It is a Byzantine Monastery built in 1030 in pristine condition. Its contemporary mosaics are famous and among the best preserved in the Byzantine world.  

View into the dome. An earthquake destroyed the dome in 1659 and the mosaic of the Pantokrator surrounded by an incomplete arrangement of archangels (see the similar treatment of this subject from 1130 in the Capella Palatina in Palermo) was replaced by a mural.   

 Mary Theotokos, the Mother of God over the altar apse, and the Trinity or the Effusion of the Holy Spirit (unusual subject in Byzantine churches) in the dome of the transept. Mary Theotokos appears only in Byzantine churches before the 13^th century (see Khintsvissi in Georgia for a discussion of this subject)

 Christ and the Madonna in the right side nave.

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 Mosaic band in an arch at Osios Lukas.

 Athens

Barbara before the church of Aghia Apostolii in the Agora. We arrived in Athens a few days before our return date, and explored the Agora, Mount Lykabettos, and the Goulandris Museum of Hellenic and Cycladic Art.

 A view of modern Athens from the path to the top of Mt. Lykabettos. The modern Olympic Stadium hides behind the agave.

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 The end of the summer season had come, the tables in this café have emptied...

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 Instead we discovered a tucked-away, small "artist's" café in the Royal Gardens right across from the Goulandris Museum (4 Neophytou Douka St).

 The room at the Goulandris with their collection of "Cycladic Idols," representations of the Great Goddess in rigor mortis which were found in the graveyards (3000-1800 BC) of the Cycladic Islands (especially Amorgos, Naxos, and the minor islands). Not accidentally they are so close to modern sculpture, that they need no effort any longer to appreciate them. The Goulandris has become our favorite museum in Athens, not too large and exceedingly well exhibited, it easily beats esthetically the tedious National Archeological Museum - which is finally (2003/2004) being renovated for the Athens Olympics....

 Rolf's Cycladic Woman. A superb "Museum" copy, about 4-feet-tall, which Barbara bought for me in Athens for my sixtieth birthday in 1991. The original is in the National Archeological Museum in Athens and was found in Dokathismata on our beloved Amorgos. I carried her home by hand wrapped in newspapers, and she now lies under our glass table as she lay for 4000 years in an Amorgos grave.