Antiquity & archaeology
The set pieces earn their reputation. What ruins them is arriving at eleven in July with four coach parties and no one to explain what you are looking at.
About Antiquity & archaeology
The chronology is the useful frame: Minoan Crete from around 2000 BC, Mycenaean citadels from 1600, the Archaic and Classical world of Athens, Delphi and Olympia, then Hellenistic Macedon, Roman Greece, a thousand years of Byzantium at Mystras and Meteora, and Venetian and Ottoman layers on top of all of it.
A licensed archaeologist changes a site from an interesting pile of stone into a place you understand — and in Greece the licensing is strict, which means the standard is high. Two focused hours with the right person beats a whole day alone.
The practical trick is first entry. Gates open at eight in summer, and the first ninety minutes at the Acropolis, Delphi or Knossos are a different experience from the rest of the day, in crowd and in temperature.
Where it is at its best
The Acropolis at first entry
Athens
Before the gates open to the flags, with the museum after.
Delphi
Central Greece
The navel of the world, on a mountainside above a sea of olive trees.
Delos
Cyclades
An uninhabited sacred island — the most complete ancient city you can walk.
Vergina
Macedonia
Philip II's tomb, underground, with the grave goods where they were found.
Regions for this
Cyclades (classic)
Santorini, Mykonos, Paros, Naxos. Famous for good reason, and entirely manageable if you get the hours right.
Crete
Not an island so much as a small country: four mountain ranges, a Bronze Age civilisation, and its own kitchen.
Dodecanese
Rhodes, Symi, Patmos, Karpathos, Nisyros. Medieval, Italian, monastic — the Aegean's most layered islands.
Athens & Argo-Saronic
The city, the coast below it, and four islands an hour from the port — Hydra, Spetses, Aegina, Poros.
Peloponnese
Mycenae, Olympia, Epidaurus, Monemvasia, the Mani. The densest concentration of history in Greece, and you can drive it.
Halkidiki & Thessaloniki
Three peninsulas of pine and clear water, and the best eating city in Greece behind them.