Reopened archaeological museum in Nafplio / Nauplion / Nauplio

On one edge of Constitution Square, opposite the old mosque which now serves as a cinema, sit the Venetian-era barracks of the town's military garrison. This building now houses the offices of the local ephorate of antiquities and the town's archaeological museum. I am particularly fond of the ephorate here as they issued me my very first free-entry card to the antiquities of Greece and did so in one day! It was not until many years later that I realized how lucky I was to get the card issued so fast.

External view of the Museum of Nafplio on Constitution Square.

Following a lengthy refurbishment which seemed to last most of the present decade and which saw little seismic stickers put all over the building and the bulk of the Mycenaean finds go to the new museum at Mycenae, the Nafplio Archaeological Museum has been re-opened with a new layout and a refreshingly decent set of texts accompanying the finds. A lot of stuff has come out of storage, not least the Francthi child burial (more about that later) so the visit I made in April this year felt in part like a visit to old friends, and in part like a new museum altogether.

The museum houses finds from many of the sites of the Argolid, including Tiryns, Asine, Berbati, Francthi, Dendra / Midea, Kazarma, Nauplion itself and probably more that I do not recall. It used to be the best collection of Mainland Bronze Age stuff in Greece after the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, although now I would think the title of second best has to go to the Mycenae museum itself.

The museum is organized on the first and second floor of the building as before, with the first floor dedicated to the prehistoric periods and the second to the Iron Age onwards. The finds are exhibited either according to findspot / period or according to type - meaning that we have all the Franchthi finds in one corner, and all of the Dendra finds in another, but at the same time, the MH vessels are placed separately from the figurines, which are separate again from a bunch of sherds with imprints on their bases showing either mats or leaves.

The truth is that visiting with A in the pram was not 100% practical (despite the AMEA / wheelchair lift which we preferred not to use) so we did not spend too much time on the top floor which in any case has marginal interest.

The Bronze Age floor or more accurately Neolithic and Helladic floor was really quite fun. First in on the left, there are the finds from the Kazarma tholos including some nice palatial style jars, together with a good photograph of the state of the tholos at present (only the back wall is standing). Moving round the room clockwise, we have the cemetery of Dendra along the wall, joined by Asine later on and the Dendra panoply in the middle of this part of the room. The panoply is displayed nicely along with other bronze finds from the tomb allowing the visitor to build a good sense of what goes with what and what finds are from which tombs. The Dendra finds are displayed next to a scale model showing the placement of each tomb in the hillside. This provides another valuable link to the findspot which enhances the visitor's understanding of the finds as part of a functional whole rather than as individual pieces of art each independent of those around it.

Kazarma: display of palatial style vases together with other grave goods.

Dendra: Model of the cemetery showing the relative locations of the Tholos Tomb, the Cuirass tomb and the other Chamber tombs.

Dendra: Nice schematic LH murex shell on grave goods .

Dendra: the finds from the Cuirass tomb, all together in one case.

Further down we pass the Asine finds, with some good diagrams of the tombs as excavated and this is followed by some cases containing only figurines, whether wheelmade or hand made from a number of different locations and of different sizes, all presented together. These include the famous Lord of Asine.

Asine: sketches showing the findspots and context of the finds together with decent texts.

Asine: the "poor" man's Vapheio cup! ceramic Vapheio cup showing a goat rather than the bull one would expect...

Various sources: various figurines whether wheel-made or coiled, all together in one case. The so called Lord of Asine is the solitary head to the right of the image.

Moving on, there are finds from the MH (including some stirrup jars with simple painted motifs) and part of the plaster floor of the megaron at Tiryns showing two dolphins, heraldically opposed.

Various: MH era ceramics, including a coarse-ware bowl with carbonised figs.

Tiryns: painted decoration from the floor of the throne room of the megaron.

Moving on clockwise, we enter the MH period properly and this is represented by burial goods from Berbati and elsewhere. The finds reproduced in the burial of the MH with articulated skeleton are in stark contrast to the finds on show from the LH graves of Dendra.

MH burial reproduction: A is surprised at the austere nature of the grave goods.

The EH is represented by impressed hearths and pottery from Tiryns and Berbati, and the room finally closes with the NL just before the door leading us to feel that perhaps we should have gone anti-clockwise rather than clockwise round the room! Apart from the Urfirnis pot which used to be the highlight of the Franchthi section in the old museum, there are now a great number of small finds on display along with one of the famous child burials of NL Franchthi - again articulated with the grave goods in place in the display. The Franchthi section also has photographs and drawings of the cave itself with much information.

EH Pot bases: Impressions with plaster "positives", with some EH sauceboats in the background (sauceboats are the archetypal EHII type shape).

EH hearth: one of a number of such ceramic hearths decorated with relief patterns. This one is from Tiryns.

EH hearth: one of a number of such ceramic hearths decorated with relief patterns. This one is from Berbati (I think)...

Franchthi cave: Decent text introducing the visitor to the complexities of the NL.

Franchthi cave: Urfirnis ware - the best of the best of NL ceramics.

Franchthi cave: infant burial on display.

Franchthi cave: repaired ceramic bowl - shows the value of ceramics at the very beginning of their use.

The texts are well thought-out and the layout of the finds (especially the articulated skeletons) adds much to the visitors' understanding.

As I said - this is one of my fave museums anyway, but I think I have to give it a thumbs-up for the way it has been refurbished, re-planned and re-opened. Well done Δ ΕΠΚΑ!

Second floor: ceramic masks - an opportunity for some interaction with A.

A weekend in the Argolid - part 2

So here we go with the description of the second day of the weekend in the Argolid, during which we set off to look for the Triassic fossil beds of Epidaurus on the old route from Mycenae to the coast.

We set off on the road out of Nafplio a little after breakfast ceased being served at the Marianna Rooms under the castle and after a short drive around the fortifications of the "Its Kale", or more altaicly Uç Kale we set off east for the Epidaurus area.

A quick word on the Uç Kale whatsit - the words mean three forts or three castles in Turkish and are a reference to the triple fortifications of the hill above Nafpio on which the Xenia and Nafplia Palace now stand.

The video below opens with a view from the hotel, shows some of the Its Kale fortifications including the winged lions which the venetians saw fit to carve into flat surfaces everywhere. It's a little jerky in places, but you get the idea.



The plan was to go out towards Ligourio, have a look around in the Natural History Museum in the town and then to go fossil hunting for ourselves in the area before the theater. If there was time, we would look for the old medieval church which is covered in classical spolia which is meant to be in Ligourio.

On the way, with K driving, we passed a MiniCult sign, in the standard 1:5 side ratio and the brown cultural sign colour. Mycenaean bridges, it said. This was quite a few km from the Mycenaean bridge I know about on the route, although I have often read about there being more thna one bridge no the way to Epidaurus. Well, we did what every self-respecting bronze-age loving sort of guy does and we stopped the car and set off along the foot path for the bridges marked by the signpost.

After a brief walk of about 300m on a footpath worn away in places by recent strong rains we reached a signpost indicating that there are two bridges, one very close, the other an unknown distance away down a continuation of the good footpath. I would not suggest doing the walk between the two bridges during normal daytime hours in the summer, leave it for late afternoon or early morning. I would love to walk the whole route some day linking Epidaurus on the coast to Mycenae via Midea.


Here is K with the bridge's corbelled arch framing her. Corbelling is a vaulting technique whereby a space can be vaulted not by making use of the arch (first discovered and widely implemented in the Hellenistic times) but by positioning each successive block in such a way that although it overhangs the previous, the forces produced do not cause instability as they are sent downwards to the base of the structure. Something like the cantilever effect, I am told. The system was used extensively for the so-called galleries at Tiryns and, of course, in the construtcion of tholos / beehive tombs.

The Three yellow squares represent the three bridges visited.

The photo in the trailer post was taken in front of the well known and very photographed mycenaean bridge at Kazarma. I have photos of myself with this bridge from maybe even ten years ago, maybe more. We found the other end of the nice new footpath here, confirming that the second bridge referred to at the first was the one at Kazarma.

I hope some day to be able to get organised enough to put up a photo from every one of my visits to the bridge.

Next up, and really rather happy with our successes in seeing new things in an old neighbourhood, we took a left turning to go find the third of the three bridges which are currently signposted. The signposts lead you up a narrow road which stops abruptly next to a local resident's house. Fortunately this local resident keeps her yard gate open, otherwise there would be no space to do the 3 point turn required if one is to avoid reversing back to the main road. The bridge is close enough to the main road to walk easily rather than to go through the whole three point turn and reversing thing.

The rubbish around the third bridge we visited.

We were rather disappointed with K to finally reach the final bridge. The recent heavy rains had brought a whole lot of crap down the hill and what we ended up seeing was less an archaeological site than a tip - complete with what seems to be the mandatory child's bicycle. I am not sure whether this is visible in the photo, but it should be clear in the video.



The video opens with the walk from the car to the first bridge, some looks at the first bridge, the road on the way to the Kazarma bridge, some walking around and into the bridge of Kazarma, complete with some close-up views of the masonry and some little numbered dots that the archaeologists have put on the bridge. From there, we have a drive-by shot of the Kazarma Tholos Tomb - pretty much contemporary with the bridges, or possibly slightly earlier (to judge by the size of the blocks in the masonry). We then have the drive up to the local lady's house and the walk to the third bridge. I know I could have made the editing tighter, but when one is rushed, and has no real natural flair, one sacrifices quality for time - that's what I say to myself to allow me to sleep at night.

Putting the bridges firmly behind us and a little disappointed by the third bridge, we continued on to Ligourio. I had mixed feelings about the Natural History of Ligourio ever since I heard about its opening and especially given the quality of other road-side private museums I have visited.

Collection of shells spelling out the museum's name

Entering, I was pleased to see the number of posters on geologic or ecologic themes, many of which were obviously brought from abroad and translated specifically for the museum. The museum is laid out on one floor, in a number of rooms with most emphasis being placed on marine fossils from the Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods, although some more recent finds from the Pikermi bone beds and from the Rafina area were also present. There was obvious emphasis placed not only on the local fossils (from the Epidaurus area) but also on Moroccan fossils which had been purchased specially for the museum.

The lady told me that photography was allowed and here is a selection of my favourite shots from in the museum:


Crinoids - these frond shaped critters are animals which anchor themselves to the sea floor and filter nutrients and plankton and stuff out of the seawater in order to eat.



An Epidaurian ammonite sawn in half and polished to display the internal structures preserved.

Death assemblages of ammonites, again from the Epidaurus region

A trident-faced trilobite of the Walliserops Trifurcatus species.

The video shows a walk-around of the main parts of the museum. One take, a little rushed.



I bought my very first trilobite from the museum shop for the sum of 10 Euro - not a bad deal I think although I have no idea how much trilobites cost elsewhere.

We had managed to gather no information about the whereabouts of the Epidaurus fossil beds, but we had a pretty good idea of what we were looking for - essentially black round things sticking out of the pinky-red matrix.

We set off from the museum and following a lead found on the net, we circled the nearby hill which we supposed must be the location of the fossil beds. We found nothing. I am not used to not finding what I am looking for, so we went round and round this hill, and we walked into it off the dirt track, but generally had no joy.

I need to have a look at a geological map of the area, slap it onto the computer, then onto the GPS and go back.



The hill we circled may not be the right place to look - but it had a dirt-road so we looked there.

From there we went to Epidaurus on the coast and back to Athens.

A weekend in the Argolid - part 1

So let me tell you a little bit more about the weekend in the Argolid. The Argolid is close enough to Athens to be the sort of place one thinks of visiting and far enough away for it to be the sort of place one thinks of visiting.

Our last trip out to the Peloponnese of the exploratory sort was on Palm Sunday 2006, and we climbed Acrocorinth and visited Corinth proper and then went to the cemetery at Aidonia and generally we had a totally diachronic time looking at remains of the three great civilizations which have made Greece characteristically theirs. Hell, it's not me blowing this hot air out of my hat, it's Toynbee himself, who in writing "The Greeks and their Heritages" about the Mycenaean era, the Classical era and the Byzantine era basically said a lot of stuff that struck a chord with me.

So we saw in one day, the Mycenaean cemetery at Aidonia, the Classical civic centre of old Corinth and the fortified Byzantine settlement of Acrocorinth, and then we found time for Frankish gothic architecture and weird mountain lakes before we went on to dodge about dirt roads at altitudes where the snow had not yet melted, but this is all another story.

This time we spread the history and culture with its tripartite nature over the whole of the weekend, and probably skimped a bit on the Classical, though not a lot.

As usual, we left Athens very late and stopped at almost every opportunity for snacks while managing to arrive at our medieval site with only about an hour until sunset. We had spent some time at one of the classical stops on our weekend, so I guess this is not totally unjustified.

My suggested route to the sites requires the driver to take a right immediately after crossing the Inakhos on the way into Argos.

The fortified hill of Deiras sits slightly before the fortified hill of Argos proper, known since antiquity as Larissa - a reference to the seagulls which no doubt frequented the spot. We walked around the sanctuaries of Athena and Apollo, slightly underwhelmed by what we were looking at, in the same way that a visitor to Sparta may be disappointed.

Layers at Deiras

Still there was opportunity to do a bit of archaeo-sleuthing and mental reconstruction and all the other mindgames which offer themselves at sites having more than one building phases or periods of usage. We then drove the circuit of the Aspis hill, stopping at some of the polygonal masonry bastions and remarking at the large number of used prophylactics littering the one lane, but asphalted ring road, before setting off up the windy road to the summit of the hill.

Polygonal masonry on Aspis Hill

The asphalt road takes the visitor right up to what must be the old main entrance, facing sort of south and a little west and commanding a view over the modern town of Argos right through to Palamidi to the south, and beyond. The books mention that three different building phases are clearly visible and we were determined to tell them all apart, although we were upset that there would be no Mycenaean fortification to look at in addition to all the others.

The view to Nafplio

We took in the view, which stretches easily out to the Palamidi to the south and on down the curving coast towards the lowlands of Arcadian Parnon and then entered the castle by what looks like it ought to be the main entrance after a small diversion playing with plants. Not any old plants - but some plant the name of which I must look up in a proper book because google is not returning anything useful. They have a bulbous head about 7-15 cm above the ground hiding the seeds. If you touch it ever so slightly, it will burst, showering the area with seeds. Very good fun for city kids like yours truly and K.



We took what seemed to be the most logical route around the castle - anticlockwise at ground level then walking back to enter the "keep" and after thoroughly exploring the keep, exiting from the ramp to the south.

Spolion in Northernmost bastion

There was a nice spolion in the northernmost bastion which I recorded on the video. Spolia are pieces of older masonry re-used as building blocks with no regard for their original purpose or position - all that is of interest is that it is a sometimes ready squared piece of building block. It is often the case that spolia incorporate carved members and inscriptions. It is on the walls of the citadel / keep that the many different periods of construction are visible - in this stretch of wall there are clearly visible ashlar, polygonal and medieval masonry courses.

To the left of the stretch of wall in the image is an improper entrance into the citadel which has some spray paint graffiti creating a rather bad image for the visitor. Talking of bad images for the visitor, the flag is in a very badly ripped state.

Entering the citadel from here (flagpole to your back and graffiti to your right), there is a walk around circuit which takes you to the opposite side and back to the car, while the rest of the citadel stretches out to your right. Do not go straight for the exit as you will miss most of the fun of having come up here.

Graffiti near the flagpole

Its is probably best to walk a little around towards the exit before turning round to face the entrance you have come in from. The upright wall with the window at the spot where you entered should now make sense architecturally. Maybe it won't, but for me it did. The window is the window in the apse of a medieval church, which runs parallel with the wall (with the ashlar and polygonal masonry described above) on the other side of it. The church is set at a level slightly higher than ground level and I am not sure from where access would have been originally. The church has a very simple plan (one aisle basilica with apse) and it was impossible for me to tell whether it was built by the defenders or the subsequent conquerors.

Looking back towards the church with cisterns in left foreground

We are currently standing about two thirds of the way to the other exit, OK - we did not go clamber about the church because I wrote that you should just look over your shoulder at it not go and clamber about. If you have clambered about, you may want to go back to where you were before going to clamber. It is not my fault you won't follow instructions.

With your back to the church, turn right and being careful of the cisterns, walk to the north encircling wall with the walkway that leads to the church again. Hang on - that means the church is set up N-S rather than E-W. The cisterns are fairly interesting in and of themselves. It is so easy to forget how important a reliable and clean supply of water is, no?

So we are now standing in the corner of the citadel, the church to our right in the distance and the cisterns behind us. We are facing northish and the walkway which goes right to the church is in front of us. There is a nice spolion column to our right, but the highlight of my visit to the citadel was this funky spolion incorporating an original archaic inscription. Absolutely mind blowing. The text does a bit of boustrophedon and has very archaic looking letters to my non specialist eye. It begins EPI TONDE and the top right corner is lost to canon or something. It incorporates the Ksi, Phi and Theta letters but as far as I can see no other late letters. I can't tell what it is about, although there is a few lines of text all beginning with KAI. There seem to be digammas in the script too and the deltas are rounded like roman Ds. I had a go at putting stuff into google but did not have as much success as the slab in the Bulgarian bar.

Archaic inscription slab

We left the citadel and came down into Argos joining the so-called ring road which takes you round the town on one way streets rather than through the central vegetable market when you are trying to get through Argos. You normally join this road by taking the right immediately before the very popular and rather good Pantazis fast food place. We went under the theatre etc. and headed out to Hellenikon to show K the pyramid and hopefully have all sorts of discussions about the loons who believe it to be older than it really is.

Here K outside the Castle of Larissa

We did not have the discussion which is a pity on the one hand as I was looking for K to confirm that what the consensus says is right, on the other hand, it was good. Why good? Well, we could not talk about it because K was totally unfamiliar with what it is the kooks say about the "pyramid". We just agreed that, yes it is pyramid shaped and left it at that.

K in front of the "pyramid" of Hellenikon

We spent the night at the rather nice Pension Marianna in Nafplio, which is on the castle and just underneath the Xenia hotel. Brilliant view and the rooms were not so bad as well.

K on top of the "pyramid" of Hellenikon - in a pose not unlike that of the French dwarf soldier from the 19th Century

Next time day 2 of the trip to the Argolid.

Cyclopean Masonry in Nafplio?

So after all the bile swelling our livers had subsided enough to allow us to go back to Nafplio, we went and went in haste because all rooms we had tried to book over the phone were full. The only way to be sure of a room there after the Hotel Kapodistrias had shafted us was to go to Nafplio and find a room.

So we got in the car and scooted over the canal and down to Nafplio and parked in the public parking whatsit, and set off walking around the whole of the old town in a sort of anti-clockwise direction looking for places like hotels and rented rooms which might be suitable for sleeping in. We found plenty of places to sleep, but none had rooms for Easter weekend and we fell back on the Elena Hotel where we had stayed during the 7th Panhellenic Speleological Meeting in October.

So, why all the excitement?

Well, walking through the old town, and in a place where it was totally unexpected, what should we stumble across, but something which I had been searching for for years without success. I had read about it many times, but was always "digging in the wrong place". It is not really surprising that I had not found this thing, given its site and situation.

We were walking along Psaromahala street (I think!) when we went past an abandoned building which did not seem to be in repair-and-rent mode. It was just the front of the building, the façade, and behind there was an empty yard and behind the empty yard was a wall.

And so it was, that after many years, I was finally looking at some of the original fortification of Nafplio / Nauplia. You read about the Mycenaean fortress at Nafplion, and stories of chamber tombs in the rock and what have you, but I had never seen any of this older Nafplio. I had always expected these traces to be up by the Palamidi fortress but of course, it makes so much more sense for them to be here.

I initially got over excited thinking that here was a stretch of legitimate LHIII Mycenaean fortification, but on looking at it in the sober light of Monday morning, back at work, on the computer screen, it looks more like a Hellenistic stretch here. I will add a comment if I ever find out what exactly that this is. It's interesting to see that it would have been right in someone's kitchen or living room originally.

There are two views, one from the road, through the destroyed building, the other from a height a little bit above the yard.

It was the ray of sunshine which made the futile searching for a room more bearable.



The through the window view



The view from above

Lycambes? who he? - Hotel Kapodistrias in Nafplio rant

Yeah, so I never was one for invective and all that jazz. Well, not since a long time ago when I was experimenting rather haphazardly and awkwardly with lyric meter.

Anyway - a while back, in this post (before going) and also in this post (after being there), I mentioned the hotel Kapodistrias in Nafplio and how it was a nice place to stay. Well, it is a nice place to stay, but the idiots who run the Hotel Kapodistrias in Nafplio are idiots and have lost me for a client.

We had a good time in December, so I call them in early February to ask for rooms for easter weekend - which in our calendar is the weekend 30 April / 1 May. The girl on the phone asks me to phone back in March, so we phoned back in late February and are told again to phone back in March, since they weren't taking bookings for Easter yet. In early March, I am told to phone back in a few weeks and I asked them specifically, like, "you better not tell me there's no rooms when I call back in late March because I've been trying to book these rooms since early February" and they assure me that there will be no problem.

So on the weekend of 26 March we phoned, and they told us that they were fully booked, cunts that they are. I asked why they had led us along for so many weeks, and they told me that they had a group which had not yet put down the deposit, but did in the end and they didn't know whether or not they would have the rooms on account of this delayed downpayment, and for this reason, they kept telling us to keep calling back.

Would it have hurt them to tell us that they had a group which had not paid a deposit yet?

Idiots.

So, I will never stay at the Hotel Kapodistrias in Nafplio again, although I liked the place and had every intention to spend a number of weekends with them.

Nafplio - and 3,000 years of architecture

The Hotel Kapodistrias was not a bad choice at all in the end. OK - so it's an old building renovated in a way that would probably make Marky’s hair curl, but it's still retained a lot of its old look, to the point of looking authentic were it not for all the plastic paints used. I have a feeling that the hotel is located on narrow street leading up to the rooms we used to rent, which means it was renovated in the last few years. There was nothing looking like this on the way up to the rooms we used to rent.

Needless to say, both days we started late... The first day we just grabbed an overpriced tyropita and headed off for Lerna via the Nea Kios road, which I had never been on in the past and wanted to see. Hmm. Not much to see, really. At Lerna, the same old guy who’s been there every single time was there to greet us, and the orange trees around were all heavily laden with their fruits, some of which had already fallen to the soil. Twenty cents is all the farmers are getting for the oranges - terrible, it’s more worth their while to leave them on the tree. Couple that with the fact that it hadn't rained yet this year, so the oranges will be more sour than sweet due to lack of water and it’s not looking good for the agriculturalists of the Argolid.

The old man was fun to talk to about how the site is going but when he got on to what the new government is going to do, I decided that that was enough small talk and it was time to change the subject. This was not so much a function of being with K, but I am no longer all geared up for telling local people that the new government is great and what have you, I am no longer that naïve. They are all the same shit. It is just a case of whose faces one can bear to see in the windows on telly every day.

I walked K round the fortifications, we passed the Neolithic house of Lerna II and went on through to the herringbone masonry with the mudbricks at the back of the site. I learnt the Greek for herringbone masonry, but I'll be buggered if I can remember it now. We then walked over to the successive MH apsidal houses, and round the house of tiles past the better preserved part of the tumulus, doing my little "and right here is where building BG is!!" bit on the way. Then into the shelter and walk round the hose of tiles explaining why it is so called, etc. Nice spotting of the imprinted reeds on the roof clays, I have photographed them in the past, but had forgotten about them that day.

So... I haven’t been to Lerna ever in the winter and I haven’t been to Lerna for probably five years or more. The site is looking a little worse for wear in strange way. Some of it is I am sure connected to the season, but other bits are most probably connected to the conservation choices made originally, straight after the excavation.

In many places, most noticeably around the MH apsidal buildings out by the east end of the site, the cement used to keep all the bits in place has been undercut by rainwater and is now floating in the air in places. Looks really shitty. The mudbricks under the (modern) ceramic tiles have lost their definition - I remember they were all very well defined little rectangles, but now on some bits of wall, you cannot tell they are bricks at all: they look like a mud-massif structure. What’s happening at the MH apsidal houses is also the case for the bits of the tumulus as well. It made me sad - so I did not photograph any of this. Moving on - inside, the house of tiles looked a little battered compared to my mind's eye remembrance. I have even downloaded some excavation photos from the relevant part of the Dartmouth site just to check. There is no easy explanation for me as to how it could have become dog-eared under the shelter. It may have been the lighting or something else - it just seemed shabbier to me. I have no way of checking on this, though. Not unless I get old pictures out and start comparing, and all.

The crates with the bones in them has gone - the friendly guy on the ticket box told me the archaeologists had taken them away - about bloody time, if you ask me.


After Lerna we scooted off to the newly named Aghia Triada, formerly called Merbakas, to have a look at the sweet and funky church of the dormition of the BVM, which has Gothic influences in its architecture. After a nice argument with K about whether or not it does have gothic influences, neither of us managing to convince the other, we called it quits and were happy just to circumambulate the building a few times, each time noticing something more exciting in the way the church had been built or decorated.




After Merbakas we went off to Tiryns to show K the two tholoi there, which she had not seen. She liked these more than all the fallen in ones we had chased back in March 2003. Quite right too. The Tiryns Tholos brought back memories of Charlie - and that day we had all run up to the top of the chamber and had our photo session. Seems just like no time ago at all, but Charlie’s been gone for about four and a half years now.

And after Tiryns, and a mutual agreement to do the dam some other day, we returned for some shopping and food to Nafplio.

The second day, will be described later...

Weekend in Napoli di Romania

It's one of those we'll do something together weekends, to counterbalance my caving weekends...

Booked in to a nice little place in town which I'll write about when I am back.

I have certainly "done" this part of the world in the past, and it becomes increasingly difficult to find new things to see here, but we'll give it a go. The museum in the old Venetian Loggia is currently closed for some undefined reason, but apparently the famously closed Mycenae site museum has now opened. It must be spring.

We might go to Lerna, which K has not seen, and is one of my favourite places - possibly because of the very much self contained nature of the place. Lerna's got the house of tiles and the EHIII apsidal houses and those funky fortifications. I have a panorama (hmm) of the place from a trip quite a few years ago, taken from the corner furthest away from the House of Tiles.



It's a nice little view of the site, with the fortification wall going back away from us on the left and the two U shaped tower bases visible. The roof tiles are there to protect the mudbricks from the elements. I think some herringbone masonry is visible in this part of the picture, too. House of tiles is off to the right under the concrete shelter, and the tumulus is visible, sticking out of the left side of the shelter about half way down. What isn’t in the picture is all the apsidal stuff over to the left, beginning in that white patch.

So, might go to Lerna - where I went for the first time in early October 1993 after leaving Ali and Jess on the beach. Went in 1995 with Charlie and Simon and maybe in 1994 alone, and went again with Simon and Alex in 1997 or 1998. The self-abbreviated Dim Bekas did a lot of business out of me. Oh yes. His rent rooms are nice and cheap and the communal bathroom's clean enough. He put in central heating, too, so he’s now working all winter. Not sure if I have been again since that time with Simon and Alex... Must have done since getting my own car - can’t have been ignoring the place so many years. I think I went again and did some panoramics in the house of tiles.

Beyond that - and on to "new" things we could try to find the Tiryns Chamber tombs which should be on the other side of the hill from the tholos tombs, we could go walk up to prof. Ilias above Mycenae (and since we'll be looking at the new museum, this seems likely). We could go have a look at the gothic influences on that church in the former Merbakas, current Aghia Triada. We could go walk around the unexcavated Kazarma, or even the hill at Midea, which I have only ever done little bits of. Bollocks - I just thought of the bits I have done with all the pink cement and then thought of the bad bad bad condition of the shaft graves (not only in B, in A also) last time I was there. May go check that out while visiting the museum.

Whatever, it should be fun.