ANCIENT CORINTH AND EPIDAUROS: Guest Post by Sara Kras

Ancient Corinth, Greece. Temple of Apollo at Sunset

My friend and fellow children’s book writer Sara Kras recently arrived in Greece to begin a year's study for her Master's Degree. Here she shares some of her first impressions of Greece. Sara loves to travel and has contributed numerous articles to The Intrepid Tourist in the past. Sara's most recent book, Baby Boomer Reboot, is a fascinating account of the challenges she faced going back to college in her fifties. 

Ancient Corinth is a small inland village about three miles from the seaport town of Corinth.  Summer months are the most difficult time to find lodging in Greece, especially by the sea.  Because we had to make a last minute booking, I thought somewhere away from the sea might be available and I was right.  I called Pegasus Rooms in Ancient Corinth.  I was told there were no rooms available for a week, but they had an off-site apartment called Acrocorinth Apartments. 

The owner told us the rate would be 60 euros per night including breakfast.  The apartment was surrounded by the owner’s vineyards and olive tree groves, supposedly a quiet farmer’s cottage.  Unfortunately, immediately to our right lived a very noisy Greek family.  The noise came and went in waves.  We knew we had to stick it out because we had nowhere else to go.  Not everyone felt the same way.  We saw an older couple on the other side of us leave early on a Sunday morning.  This was because the patriarch of the noisy Greek family decided to rev his motorcycle very loud for several hours.  We handled the noise by exploring the surrounding area, which took us to the ancient ruins of Corinth and to the very well-preserved amphitheater in Epidauros. 

Our apartment in Ancient Corinth.

Located on the Isthmus of Corinth, Ancient Corinth had the unique position of being literally the midway point between Athens and Sparta, two warring city-states.  Ancient Corinth was founded in 8^th century BC.  However, it reached its peak in the 7^th and 6^th centuries BC.  The Temple of Apollo dominates the town and still does today. 

Surrounding the ruins at Ancient Corinth is a cute village with restaurants, tourist shops, and traditional food markets.  Our favorite restaurant in Ancient Corinth was Marinos Restaurant.  We ate there every night for a week and the food was consistently delicious.

The ruins are not a large complex.  It takes about an hour or two to see it all.  Once you’ve walked through the entire ruin, you exit by the ancient marble walkway.  There’s a profound reverence this walkway inspires.  How many people walked on this marble walkway since the 8^th century BC?  You can just imagine each person carrying their concerns, worries, and joys as they trod upon the walkway leaving a miniscule imprint of their bare feet or soles of their shoes.

There’s also an interesting museum connected with the site, which is a common theme at most ancient ruins in Greece.  This museum featured carvings of the mythological battles of Gods and men against the centaurs and Amazon women.

Temple of Apollo during the day.

Marble walkway of Ancient Corinth.

Carving of soldier fighting an Amazon. 

(Notice her outfit of a dress with half her chest covered and the rest exposed.  This appeared to be the only outfit the Amazons wore into battle per the many carvings we viewed.)

After seeing the ruins in Ancient Corinth, we decided to take an hour road trip to Epidauros to see the Epidauros Theater, a UNESCO World Heritage site.  This magnificent marble theater was built around 330 to 320 BC.  It seats up to 14,000. Greek plays are still performed there today and a schedule of shows was posted at the site. The acoustics are still very spectacular. Tourists below sang or clapped so those above could hear them.

Just like Ancient Corinth, there was a small museum as part of the ruin complex.

Sara standing in front of the theater

The gorgeous view from one of the top seats!

There are so many ruins and places to see in Greece, it’s hard to choose.  But if you find yourself in Corinth or the Peloponnese, these two sights are worth the visit.

SPRINGTIME IN SICILY, Part 2: Erice, Selinunte and Segusta

Selinunte, Sicily. Acanthus flowers grow among the ruins of Temple C on the Acropolis of the ancient Greek city of Selinunte. Their leaves inspired the design of the tops of the Corinthian columns.

At the end of May Art and I took a two week trip to Sicily, staying in Palermo, Erice and Catania, and taking day trips to the ancient Greek ruins at Selinunte, Segesta and Agrigento and to the ancient Roman villa filled with mosaics at Piazza Armerina. The weather was warm, but not hot, and hillsides were covered with a host of wildflowers.  Here is the second of several reports of our trip.

Rooftops and cobbled street in Erice.

After three days in Palermo, our next five nights were spent in the tiny hilltop town of Erice, about an hour and a half drive from the Palermo airport. The narrow cobbled streets, Norman castle, and old churches make you feel as if you have been transported in time to the Middle Ages–when Erice was a thriving center on Sicily’s west coast.

Erice. The Norman castle known as the Castle of Venus, built on the site of a 7th C. BC temple, was later converted to the Temple of Venus by the ancient Romans. The castle was a stronghold in the Middle Ages. Now it is an archeological site.

Today Erice is largely a tourist destination and the coastal town of Trapani below is the larger population center. Erice is the home of the Ettore Majorana Foundation, which was sponsoring a scientific conference that my husband Art was attending and the reason for our trip to Sicily. While Art was at his meetings I joined the tourists and wandered the streets, exploring the castle and other historic buildings and browsing in the shops along the main street. (Erice is small–one can walk around the whole town in an hour.)

The trinacria, an image with a face in the center and three bent legs, is the ancient symbol of Sicily. Here is a terracotta version. Red glazed pottery is typical of the region.

The shops were full of local crafts–colorful rugs and pottery–and typical foods such as the curly busiati pasta, salt harvested from the shallow salt pans in Trapani and sweets for which Erice is famous.

Colorful cotton rag rugs are a typical craft of Erice.

While most visitors to Erice are day trippers, either riding the cable car from Trapani or driving up the windy road to park outside the Erice town gate, there are a few hotels. We stayed in rooms provided by the conference center.

Queen Anne's Lace growing above the castle walls.

By evening the streets are mostly empty and on several nights that we were there the mist moved in from the sea creating a ghostly feel as the cool, moist air slid through the narrow streets. 

Selinunte, Temple E. This temple was reconstructed in the 1950s and is one of the few of the Greek ruins in Sicily that you can walk around and experience from the inside.

The last day of Art’s conference was an organized bus trip from Erice to the ancient Greek ruins at Selinunte and Segesta. Selinunte, about an hour’s drive from Erice on Sicily's south coast, was once a thriving Greek city covering 250 acres. Originally established in 638 B.C. by the Greeks, then taken over by the Carthaginians, it was abandoned after the Romans took over Sicily around 200 B.C. Today Selinunte is an archeological park, with piles of pieces from collapsed buildings, and one reconstructed temple where you can walk around the interior (unlike temples at other sites in Sicily) and imagine what it might have been like to live in ancient times.

The modern seaside town of Selinunte, viewed from the archeological site.

Following paths lined with spring wild flowers, we explored the ruins, then went into town for a delicious lunch of risotto, pasta, seafood and fresh fruit at a restaurant overlooking the beach.

Ancient Greek temple at Segesta.

After lunch, we got back on the bus to drive to Segesta to see another Greek temple, this one perched high on a hill overlooking a gorge, and to see an amphitheater at the top of an adjacent hill. The temple was never finished (the columns are unfluted) and one view by historians is that it was built to impress a visiting delegation from Athens and then abandoned after they left.

Ancient Greek theater at Segesta. It is known for its excellent acoustics.

An alternative to the long walk up the hill to the site of amphitheater is a small shuttle bus, which we took. We walked back down, enjoying the late afternoon sun that highlighted the temple and the roadside flowers.

Several varieties of thistle are common in Sicily.

On our way back to Erice for our last night on Sicily's west coast, we enjoyed the views of rolling farmland and of the seaside below as the bus wound its way up to the top of the hill.

Sicilian countryside. View from Erice.

The following morning we headed back to Palermo and caught a train to Catania for five days on Sicily's east coast.

TEOTIHUACAN: City of Water, City of Fire at the de Young Museum, San Francisco

At the entrance to the de Young Museum in San Francisco with an image from the Teotihuacan Exhibit

Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, California, is an amazing display of recent discoveries from the ancient city of Teotihuacan, whose ruins lie just outside the modern metropolis of Mexico City. One of the earliest, largest, and most important cities in the ancient Americas, Teotihuacan is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most visited archaeological site in Mexico.

Detail of fresco mural with animal motifs; colors were made from natural dyes applied directly to the wet plaster.

I first visited Teotihuacan in 1991 on a day trip from Mexico City. (See my post of 11/11/13.) I climbed the steep steps of the Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon and toured some of the buildings that once had been workshops and living quarters. I was amazed at the complexity of the sculptures, murals, and other decorative motifs as well as the sheer size of the city. Two years later I returned to research my book, City of the Gods: Mexico’s Ancient City of Teotihuacan. Since my visits in the 1990s many new discoveries have been made. When I heard they were being exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco I made a special point of visiting when I was in the Bay Area in December. (The exhibit goes from September 30, 2017 to February 11, 2018.)

Mosaic figure from Pyramid of the Moon excavations

The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), features recent, never-before-seen archaeological discoveries and other major loans from Mexican and US cultural institutions. Monumental and ritual objects from Teotihuacan’s three pyramids are shown alongside mural paintings, ceramics, and stone sculptures from the city’s apartment compounds.

Shell necklace beads

From jewelry, masks, small carved figures to large sections of murals and depictions of various deities, the exhibit is a fascinating look at this ancient city and its thriving culture. Here are just a few of some of my favorite items in the exhibit.

Avian effigy vessel, ceramic, shell, greenstone and stucco 

Section of much longer wall fresco decorated with footprints along the bottom

Thousands of tiny clay figures just a few inches high have been found at Teotihuacan. It is believed that they were used as part of daily household rituals.

Brazier supported by the hunched figure of the Old God; it is believed the brazier was used to burn incense and that the eyes carved on the side are symbols of fire.

Quetzal sculpture; the quetzal, a bird native to Central America, was valued for its bright green feathers.

Fresco fragment of bird with shield and spear; the curved lines from the bird's mouth indicate speaking or singing

Teotihuacan was the largest and most important city in Mexico and Central America for more than 800 years. But around 750 C.E., the civilization at Teotihuacan disintegrated and the city fell to ruins. During centuries of disuse, what was left of the buildings gradually fell down and became overgrown with weeds. Only a small portion of what once was the great city of Teotihuacan has been excavated. Continuing research will reveal more about this first great city in the Americas.