After doing a bit of island hopping, we took a ferry to the mainland of Greece and got ready to visit our fill of ancient Greek sites. The kids had been reading Percy Jackson and taking classes on Greek myths, so we were ready to go!
After arriving at the ferry port, we picked up a rental car and headed for our first stop, Delphi. The site is a little bit out of the way, but a popular day trip from Athens. The ancient Greeks considered Delphi to be the center of the world, and it was here that the famous Oracle of Delphi resided, in a temple built to the god Apollo in 8,000 B.C. There was a time in history when no major battle was fought until leaders consulted the Oracle to determine their chances of success.
Delphi Archaeological Museum
We arrived in the evening, with just enough time to stop at the Delphi Archaeological Museum before it closed. As you would expect of a museum located in the country of a great ancient civilization, it was a treasure trove of ancient relics. We walked past all of the amazing statues and artifacts. The most amazing part to me was seeing the fragments of marble that still had painting and color on it.
Maybe it is just me, but so many times I see ruins and they are just plain gray or beige pieces of rock. Yes, they may be carved, but we never see color. It is easy to forget that these pieces were not just beautifully carved, but also full of paint and color. It was amazing to see these fragments and helped to really be able to imagine what they looked like thousands of years ago.
Temple of Athena Pronaia
The ancient site of Delphi stretches up a large hill that makes up the lower slope of Mount Parnassus, the main part of which was closing when we arrived. However, the lower part of the site, which is now separated by the modern road from the upper part, is always open and available to visit, so we headed there to check it out, eager as we were for our first sighting of these famous Greek ruins.
The ruins of the temple and the natural beauty of its surroundings were stunning. So stunning, in fact, that I uncharacteristically didn’t take any pictures, except of some of the ruins that hadn’t been reassembled, and showed how the pieces fit together, in a very lego-esque way.
It is hard to imagine what the temple would have looked like in its heyday, but the arches that were built up (they had all been in ruin, and you can see where people pieced it back together from the pieces laying around), but no doubt it would have been a mystical place.
Back at our hotel in the nearby town, we had a wonderful view all the way to the Gulf of Corinth. We enjoyed the view that night, and thanks to COVID, we were also served our hotel breakfast directly on the balcony!
We strolled along the Sacred Way, the path up to the main temple. It was built to impress people coming to visit the Oracle, and was lined with statues and monuments.
We continued along the Sacred Way, heading towards the Temple of Apollo, the main building in the Oracle’s day.
As stunning as the Temple’s columns look today, I can only imagine how impressive it may have been a few millennium ago.
As we climbed, we passed the theatre, which dated back to the 4th century BC, and hosted up to 5,000 people when this site was host to the 2nd most important ancient athletic games, called the Pythian Games, behind only to the Olympics in importance.
At the very top of the site, we reached the stadium, where the athletic events were held during the Pythian Games, beginning in the 6th century BC, and lasting all the way until the 5th century AD.
