This has been a wonderful day. On a normal holiday of a week, this would have been the day I flew back to London. Instead, I had a lazy morning washing some clothes and doing some bits of painting, and then after lunch I went to the local archaeological site at Cape Kolonna, and round the very good local archaeological museum, and then had another long leisurely swim, this time from the other town beach, the one inside the ancient harbour walls.
To start with, here are my bits of painting from this morning. These all show things I can see from my balcony; either the mountains and the coast of Angistri, or little details like bits of buildings...
And this is the last of my drawings done while I was in Athens; a view over the city and Mt Parnitha from the site of the Temple of the Eleusinian Goddesses.
As for Cape Kolonna; I'm just blown away. Twenty-five years ago it was overgrown and barely sign-posted and the museum was shut. I wandered around back then, totally confused and more than a bit worried by the number of open cisterns I was finding, totally unfenced and not always covered. I was still toddling around on a stick then, of course, feeling lame in every sense and altogether rather sorry for myself but determined to get a bit of archaeology.
This is rather the way I remember the site; overgrown and with bits of wall sticking up
Today it has been properly excavated, cleared and discreetly signposted. There are a series of excellent interpretation boards, and the whole of a small city is laid there before you, a palimpsest of centuries of history. One can see Bronze Age alleys and lanes, and Archaic and Classical houses, Hellenistic gates and Roman paved streets, and eight different phases of construction in the fortification walls, from prehistoric to Byzantine... It was all very quiet, just me and two German girls and the cicadas and crickets and seabirds. It felt oddly like Pompeii; that sense that this is a real town that has just slipped away.
A lane of the 5th century BC
And another from the Bronze Age, with the Classical Temple of Apollo in the background
The temple of Apollo, one of the ones Pausanias mentions, stood on the highest ground; its one remaining column gave the site its name.
Approaching the Apollo Temple
The one remaining Ionic column
Yours truly showing off her legs
The view down into the ancient harbour from the Apollo Temple; the lines of rocks inshore are the remains of harbour walls of the Classical period
Nearby they've uncovered the remains of the Temple of Artemis, and an unidentified altar, which could be from the shrine of Dionysos Pausanias says was near the other two.
The fragmentary remains of the Temple of Artemis
The Temple of Asklepios he mentions, however, the fine large theatre and adjacent stadium, all these it would seem are no more.
But in the museum they show finds from a magnificent Bronze Age tomb that was probably used as a heroon or hero's shrine; a photograph shows the ancient warrior was buried on his right side, with his bronze longsword and two daggers, a gold headband, some superb pots from Crete, and a boar's-tusk helmet. This is surely either Aiakos, the legendary founder of the city, or his favourite son Phokos, killed accidentally-on-purpose by his envious brothers. Pausanias speaks of both of them having tomb-shrines in the city. The sword in particular is magnificent, a slender blade almost two feet long, with gold decoration and silver rivets still in situ in the haft-end, though the haft itself has been lost. This weapon could have seen the fall of Troy, which is a seriously stunning thought.
There was a sign in the museum asking you not to take photographs, but I had already taken a couple before I saw it.
As well as an excellent collection of small finds and sculptures, very well-displayed and labelled, they have a series of diagrams and scale models showing the development of the city over some 2000 years, and the way each phase of the fortifications leads into the next. It's all an object-lesson in clarity and quality.
And there's a pithos, a clay storage jar, taller than me. I've never seen one that large; but outdoors in the site there's another one. They must have been something local. Maybe they were used for the storage of pistachio nuts; it's the most famous local crop nowadays, who knows, maybe its history stretches back that far...
The unbroken chunk above ground was over about four feet high, the neck would have added another foot or so and there's at least another foot sunk into the ground
There was also a lovely exhibition of contemporary ceramic sculpture; I managed to sneak a picture of one of these, "Offerings" by Clio Makri.
Another wonderful swim, and a stroll back through town; the sunset seen from my balcony, and finally a supper of fish and salad, eaten actually on the beach, with little waves lapping on the sand barely six feet away from my table... A good day.
