Peloponnese - Region Attractions

The most southerly part of the Greek mainland, linked with the rest of the country only by the Isthmus of Corinth, is a peninsula, but it has been regarded since ancient times as an island - the island of Pelops or Peloponnese.

The myth tells us that Pelops, a descendant of Tantalos, came into this land, defeated King Oinomaos of Pisa in a chariot race, married his daughter Hippodameia and took over his kingdom. In the course of his funeral ceremonies the Olympic Games were founded to honor his memory. His descendants, the Pelopids or Atreids, ruled in Mycenae and Sparta.

The peninsula, with an area of 21,440 sq. km/8,280 sq. mi, is much broken up by hills and the sea and shows great variety of landscape pattern. In the center is the thinly populated upland region of Arcadia, bordered on the north by a mountain range, with Erymanthos (2,223m/7,294ft), Khelmós (2,355m/7,727ft) and Kyllíni (2,376m/7,796ft) as its highest peaks. Beyond this the region of Achaea extends north to the Gulf of Corinth. On the east side of the peninsula is the Argolid, with the Argolic Gulf, Náfplion and the strongholds of Mycenae and Tiryns. To the south of Arcadia is Laconia with its capital Sparta, open to the sea in the south and separated from Messenia to the west by the Taygetos range, which ends in the Máni peninsula. Finally there is the low-lying region of Elis in the northwest of the Peloponnese, with Olympia as its best known sight.

Originally occupied by a pre-Greek population, in the second millennium B.C. the center of the Mycenaean world and in the first millennium largely under the domination of the Doric state of Sparta, the Peloponnese is a region rich in both myth and history; and later centuries have also made their contribution to its story. During the Middle Ages there was an influx of Slavs, though the towns remained entirely Greek. After the fourth Crusade (1204) the whole of the Peloponnese passed into the hands of Frankish knights; but Mistra soon became the starting-point of the Byzantine reconquest. In 1453 the Turks arrived; and after more than three and a half centuries of Turkish rule it was in the Peloponnese that the war of liberation began.

All the various phases of this long history have left their mark on the Peloponnese, from the strongholds of the Mycenaeans and Greek sites like Olympia, Messene and Neméa to the castles of the Crusaders and Byzantine Mistra. In addition the long sandy beaches on the west coast, on the Gulf of Corinth, at Náfplion and on the peninsula to the east make the Peloponnese a popular holiday region which offers every facility for relaxation and recreation, ideally combined with an encounter with the past.

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