Trip to Peloponnese: Tuesday

For each trip every cya student is required to attend and we are split into 3 buses and then on each bus we are split into two groups. Each group has an assigned professor who will be the guide for the rest of the week. Each bus also has a bus mother who is a staffer at CYA and comes along to handle any of our problems. So my bus left early on Tuesday morning and we started driving to the Peloponnese. The Peloponnese is the area to the west of Athens. It it technically the island of Pelops but that is only because they disconnected the island from the mainland by building the Corinth canal so it is not really an island. I will try to put a map in. So our first stop was the Corinth canal even though it is not ancient it is still interesting but we only looked at it for a short break so I don't have much to say on it.

After that we drove to our first site which was some athletic complex. My professor guide for the week was my professor for Archaeology of Athens and the other professor on the bus was my Democracy of Athens teacher but he also teaches a class on Ancient Greek Athletics so we had many altheltic sites to visit since all of his students for the week were students in that class. This site was not very interesting since it was all gated off and we were not allowed in so we just looked through the bars.

Next we went to see the stadium at Isthmia. This was pretty cool the first part of the site was a welcoming structure and an area where the athletes would get ready we then walked through the ancient tunnel through the hill to pop out on the other side where the stadium was. So it was basically what football players and basketball players do today when they enter the field/court. The tunnel was still standing and well preserved from ancient times and you could see all the ancient graffiti where the athletes had carved their name. The stadium itself was a long running stadium with the ancient starting gates and the sloped hills. At first the people would just sit on the sloped hillside but then gradually the Greeks built in seating.

The next site was Nemea which was a sanctuary of Zeus. Zeus's tree was the cypress trees and when they were excavating this site they were able to tell from some remains where the trees had actually stood and so they replanted new cypress trees in the same spot which was pretty cool. Today most people think of ancient sites as in an open field with no protection from the sun but the Greeks did plant a ton of trees around their sites but today it is very rare for any trees to be at the site. We also looked at a Greek bath house which was sweet. The Greeks unlike the Romans did not have hot water but they were able to channel fresh water into the bath and then have the dirty water run out and away from the site. They would tilt the floors to accomplish that.

After lunch we went to the site of Mycenae! Mycenae is a very important site and the most important and the namesake for Mycenaean times which is the civilizations after the dark ages during 1200-800 BCE. First we went to a tholos tomb which somewhat looks like a beehive tomb. These tombs are huge ! They have a monumental entrance with a triangle at the top and then they piled dirt on the top so that it looks like it was built into a hill. They did this so they would be more protected. Once you enter there is a large circular room and then a small room off of the main room where the tomb was. These types of tombs were obviously only for the extremely wealthy. We then went to the main citadel of Mycenae which is on the top of a hill, acropolis, overlooking the near by bay. We looked at the grave circles that were found outside of the city walls, as is typical for the Greeks. These grave circles are extremely important to the knowledge of the Mycenaean civilizations because there were tons of artifacts found in these grave circles such as the bronze mask of Agamemnon etc. These finds are now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. We also went into a well that the Mycenaeans had built to get fresh water without having to leave the acropolis. Therefore we know because of the well and the fortification wall around the acropolis that they were afraid of attack. We didn't have enough flashlights and it was pitch dark as you walked farther down into the well but it was really impressive. We then did a quick tour of the Mycenae museum but it was a bit of a disappointment since they don't have the originals finds of the site.

After that we drove to Nauplion where we were spending the next two nights. This is an adorable town on the water. We had a short walking tour of the town to point out some old remains from Turkish occupation and such but our professor kept it short since we were obviously all really tired from so many site visits. She even let us stop at the best gelato shop in the town which was an Italian gelato shop which was obviously humorous to me. The owners even spoke Italian !

We then walked around the waterfront on our own for a bit. The town is nestled in between a huge mountain where there is a large fortress at the top and the water. The town also has a prison/fortress in the water which is gorgeous. That night I had an early dinner and went to bed after that.

Trip to Peloponnese Tuesday