Aventuras a Pie (de Página)In this video, we are going to explore the ruins of Isthmus, located on the Isthmus of Corinth, a few meters from the Corinth Canal and we are going to tell the story of the Isthmian Games, the Panhellenic games that were held at this site in honor of Poseidon.
The Corinth Canal is an artificial canal that allows ships to navigate from the Ionian Sea to the Aegean Sea, avoiding circumnavigating the Peloponnese peninsula, whose rocky coastline is extremely dangerous and thus saving hundreds of kilometers.
Its history involves many ups and downs, failed attempts and even battles.
In the adventure of the day we visited the red castle of Karistos, in the Greek island of Euboia, in Greece.
The castle of a thousand years of age passed through many hands, being a Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian and Ottoman castle, before ending up in Greek hands.
In this video, we explore it in detail.
In this video, we visit the ruins of the Egyptian temple of Marathon, Greece.
In this video, we visit the ruins of the Egyptian temple to the gods, in the vicinity of Marathon, in Greece.
The temple was funded by a very rich Roman senator, named Herodes Atticus, more known for having built the odeon of Athens, and the Nymphaeum of Olympia.
Herodes Atticus had his villa in the vicinity in which his own statue and the one of his wife have been found.
The archaeological site of Lerna is one of the most unknown and most fascinating in Greece.
It was a small village in the Peloponnese, not far from Tiryns and Mycenae, which is older than these 2 and older than the Pyramids of Egypt.
The site has been inhabited from 8000 years ago until the Mycenaean period and with human activity until the Roman period, when it was finally abandoned.
The most important ruins is the “house of the tiles” which is believed to have been a government building of the time, from 2500BC to 2250BC, when a fire destroyed it and a sacred mound was built on top of the ruins.
The house was desecrated 2 times, with 2 tombs 1000 years later, in the Mycenaean period.
The site includes the ruins of a house, from 5900BC, remains of a wall as well as other Mycenaean period ruins.
In mythology, Lerna was known as the lair of the Hydra, the multi-headed aquatic serpent, which lived in a swampy lake, which unfortunately no longer exists.
In this video, we explore an abandoned Roman quarry with several giant columns, high up on a mountain, near the city of Karistos, in the Euboean region of Greece.
The region was very well known and desired in antiquity for its marbles, which adorned the entire Roman world, from Rome to Constantinople.
Today, the region is known in Greece for the stone, to which it calls “Plaka Karistou”.
The quarry that we filmed had 9 enormous columns, plus some smaller columns and others unfinished.
In this video we explore 4 dragon houses (“drakospiti” or “drakospito” in Greek), which are very ancient buildings built with huge stone blocks.
There exist throughout Greece, including Athens, but they are mainly found in the south of Evia (Euboea).
It is not known with certainty who built them, but it is believed that it was a nomadic people who settled in Evia (Euboia) in 1200 BC.
Their use is not clear and Pausanias does not name them in his accounts.
It is located on a dry hill near the Greek Public Power Company (DEH) power plant in the Milaki village of Euboea and near a cement factory.
From above there is almost a 360-degree view.
It was probably built in the early decades of the Frankish occupation of Euboea in the 13th century.
It is said that a 1.5 km tunnel connects the castle with Milaki.
The castle remained in use at least until the years of the Greek Revolution when it was a prison for the Turks.
The shape of the castle is a trapezoid measuring 46x30m with an area of 1200 square meters. In the center of the enclosure rises the central tower, almost square. Its dimensions: 7.10 x 7.60 meters. It is preserved to an approximate height of 11 meters.
Of the castle walls, the north and west sides are better preserved. The east wall is destroyed. On the south side, only a part in the west is in relatively good condition. The western wall extends approximately to a length of 42 m.
Outside the castle, to the south and to the west, there was a small fortified settlement consisting of small houses with dimensions of 4x4m or 4x5m, with adobe walls without mortar and with wooden roofs.
We explored the Mycenaean cemetery of Aidonia, located in the northeastern Peloponnese of Greece, near Mycenae and Nemea, as well as Lake Stymphalia.
In the video, we show the 25 tombs in the cemetery, plus 7 other tombs we found nearby.
The cemetery is very well maintained and is open to the public free of charge.
A visit takes between one and one and a half hours.
The cemetery contains almost exclusively chambered tombs, which are entirely hewn from the natural rock and consist of an elongated corridor leading from the ground surface to the underground entrance, through which one enters the burial chamber.
Chambered tombs were used throughout the Mycenaean era (c. 1600/1550-1100 BC) and are often arranged in separate groups.
Unlike other tombs of the same style and period, these are more elaborate, with vertical walls, gabled roofs, and ornate entrances.
The cemetery became famous after it was brutally looted by organized groups of antiquities dealers in the 1970s.
An excavation by the Archaeological Service followed, unearthing finds that were linked to the products of the illegal excavation when these became available for sale abroad in 1993.
The Greek state’s swift action led to the repatriation of the antiquities (1996), which were presented along with the excavation finds to the National Archaeological Museum and are now housed in the Nemean Archaeological Museum.
Numerous relics were found, primarily clay vessels and figurines.
The tomb in the lower group had been used repeatedly, not only during the Mycenaean period, but also during the Geometric and Archaic periods and later.
Today we are going to travel to the Peloponnese to visit part of one of the most unknown aqueducts in Greece, the aqueduct of Corinth.
It had 85 kilometers in length and was probably the longest aqueduct in all of Greece.
It was built by order of Emperor Hadrian, connecting one of the 3 springs that feed the Lake Estinfalia with Acrocorinth.
The very curious thing is that we couldn’t find a single photo or video.
Only the work of research by the archaeologists.
Originally it had 23 bridges, of which only 4 are preserved intact and one is only large.
This bridge is 41 meters long and preserves its 2 rows of arches.
Unfortunately the area is not cared for; it is full of garbage and with the vegetation very overgrown.