Nafplio, Greece: The Lower Town

This is the second part of our tour of historic Nafplio. The commercial town is built on a peninsula below the limestone hill on which the Venetian Palamidi fortress is situated. Unlike Athens and many other Greek towns, Nafplio was spared the worst of the post-World War II building boom, when characteristic and elegant late-1800s buildings were torn down and replaced with mass-produced concrete boxes.



The touristic center town is Plateia Syntagmatos (Constitution Square). I remember years ago when it was asphalt and rather grungy, with traffic. Then, about 15 years ago, an energetic major cleaned it up and paved it with marble. Now it is rimmed with cafés, restaurants, and boutiques. When it is wet, the surface is slick. (The photographs above are scans of Kodachrome 25 film, taken through a 20 mm Russar lens on a Leica M3 rangefinder camera).

The side streets are pretty interesting. This one leads west away from the Plateia. The shops on the right are built into a former mosque.

They squeeze some pretty small shops into odd corners.

This narrow lane is west of the Plateia. The restaurants here are cheaper and better than the ones along the waterfront.

The scene above was taken from a rather basic hotel where the family and I stayed in 1992. The view down the street was interesting, but one night was enough. (Scanned from a Kodachrome slide exposed through a 135 mm Tele-Elmar Leica lens).

The view directly down included this genuine Mini - a perfect car for narrow Greek streets.

On another street, an old Austin or Morris car. The body shop in town must have had a sale on yellow paint.

A surprising number of buildings are deserted or have absentee owners.

An abandoned shop, which once would have been a typical neighborhood store with groceries and odds and ends.

Near the store in the previous scene was this abandoned swimming pool.

I would think swimming in the sea would be more fun, but one day in 2005, we saw these things bobbing in the bay. No swim that day.

Decay and Recovery: Nafplio, Greece (the Upper Town)

Nafplio (Modern Greek: Ναύπλιο, Nafplio) is an ancient city that has been occupied, decayed, and revitalized many times. It is located in the Peloponnese region of Greece at the head of the Argolic Gulf. As described in the Blue Guide Greece, "Its delightful situation near the head of the Argolic Gulf and its splendid examples of late-medieval military architecture make it one of the most attractive in Greece. Originally walled, the quiet city huddles along the north slopes of a small rocky peninsula, crowned by the citadel of Its-Kale (279 ft), towards which narrow streets, lined with old houses attractively balconied and shuttered, rise from the quay." Nafplio is about 4 hours drive from Athens and is a quiet alternative if you want to avoid the frantic city.




For a first-time visitor, I suggest you forego the cafes and whiskey bars along the trendy waterfront and tour the upper city, built on the slopes below the Venetian Palamidi fortress. The ancient houses cling to the hillside, overgrown with luxurious grape vines and orange trees.

This is one of the earliest maps of Nafplio, showing the city before 1540, when still in Venetian possession (map dated ca. 1571-75, Venice; from the Wikimedia Commons).

Following the Venetian era, the Peloponnese was part of the Ottoman empire. An occasional old Turkish fountain provides evidence of the centuries of Turkish rule.


The view into the city is a melange of clay roofs, gables, church towers, private terraces, ancient trees, antennas, and solar panels.

This large dome was once part of a mosque, but was converted to a church after Greek Independence in 1821. You can see where one of the minarets emerged from the corner.

Continuing the walk of the upper town, look at this amazing wall. The massive cut stones are Cycladic in origin (early-mid Bronze age, or older than 2000 years BCE). The crude smaller stones are much newer, clearly evidence of how old construction has been included in the modern. Notice how the Cycladic stones do not have any mortar and were fit with amazing precision. Imagine if here in USA we could casually include 4000-year-old walls into the edge of a lane.

In the next blog entry, we will explore the lower city.

Photographs taken with an Olympus E-330 digital camera with Olympus 14-54 mm f/2.8-3.5 lens (superb optic).