More mythology and mountains. And loads of wild flowers.
Some people do Delphi and Hosios Loukas as a day trip from Athens. My new friends at Dimos Jewelry thought two days was too much for Delphi. The cool thing about road tripping is you can always detour for lunch, stop for a photo, or sleep late if you want. I did all of those. =)
Lunch on the Gulf of Corinth was a whim. And the best calamari I’ve had in years.
No one had told me driving in Greece would be so fun. Good roads and epic mountains.
My first day in Delphi
Hotel breakfast and then I walked to the furthest site and the Temple of Athena at Delphi. Yup even tho’ Delphi is best known for the Temple of Apollo, there is a nice Temple of Athena too. The whole area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987.
This was strategic. Go to the furthest site and hit the others on the way back. I could have easily done the reverse and gone to the museum first and but I still wouldn’t have missed all the tour busses. So why not get my steps in and enjoy the cool mountain air.
Tholos of Athena
The Tholos is part of Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia in Delphi. It’s 800m from the down the hill from the main ruins. The highlight is the circular (tholos) temple with a combination of 20 simple square Doric columns and 10 ornate leafy Corinthian columns.
The remains of several treasuries have interesting descriptions if not picturesque ruins.
Gymnasium Ruins
It’s not a Greek settlement without a gymnasium complex, but this one is closed. I did catch a glimpse of some wild (or maybe tame) boars running around and getting their steps in. 😉 But I wasn’t able to get a photo of them, just of the ruins from the road.
Temple of Apollo
The existing ruins date from the fourth century BCE on the foundations of earlier temples. You can buy your ticket at the museum or the ruins, winter ticket (1 November – 31 March) price is half off only 6€ another good off-season deal. Plan to spend at least an hour exploring the site.
Oracle at Delphi
As far back as 800 BCE, priestesses at the temple of Apollo at Delphi would make prophesies. The short version of the story is toxic fumes made the priestesses hallucinate and make their prophesies. So the scene from 300 is broadly historically accurate, meaning a woman in ancient Greece on Mt Parnassus inhaled something, went into a trance, danced around and said words.
The oracles were consulted before EVERY war for almost 1400 years. Emperors Alexander the Great, Hadrian, and Constantine were all known to have consulted the oracles. More than 500 prophesies attributed to the Oracles have survived.
Treasuries
The various treasuries here are in better condition than at the Tholos, but are still ruins. The treasuries were built by their namesake city-states to thank the oracle for advice.
The best reconstructed is the Athenian Treasury built in honor of their victory at Marathon.
Serpent Column
A replica of twisted column of bronze 8m (26ft) high commemorating the Greek victory at Plataea over the Persian Empire erected in 479BCE. The original bronze was taken to Constantinople in 324CE and can still be seen there.
Delphi Museum
The best artifacts from the ruins are at the museum (and use same entrance ticket). At the very beginning of the museum is a painting by A Toumaire of his imagining of what the Temple of Apollo might have looked like in ancient times.
Enjoy a slider of my favorites from the museum below.
After the museum, I grabbed a late lunch of pizza and carafe of epitrapezios oinos (table wine) with a view of the Gulf of Corinth. The leftover pizza was also my dinner while I planned and plotted my next day.
