Greece: From Athens to Thessaloniki
When to go
April to mid-June and September to October. In July and August Athens and the plain of Thessaly pass forty degrees, the sites close at the hottest hours and Hydra is crowded with day boats. In winter the road to Meteora can see snow, and some island boats run less often — but the sites are empty and the light is clear.
The stops
Interactive map of the route on our site ›
- Athens2 nights
The Acropolis has stood over the city for two and a half thousand years; the Parthenon was finished in 438 before the common era and survived almost whole until 1687, when a Venetian shell hit the gunpowder the Ottomans had stored inside it.
- Corinth Canalstop on the way
A cut through the isthmus about six kilometres long, with rock walls up to some eighty metres high. The emperor Nero began digging it in the year sixty-seven with a golden shovel; it was finished only in 1893, and it is so narrow that large ships cannot use it.
- Mycenaestop on the way
The citadel of the kings of the Bronze Age, entered through the Lion Gate of about 1250 before the common era. In 1876 Heinrich Schliemann found gold masks in its royal graves and announced that he had looked upon the face of Agamemnon; the mask is in fact older than the Trojan War he had in mind.
- Nafplio3 nights
The first capital of modern Greece, from 1829 to 1834. On the steps of the church of Saint Spyridon the first head of state, Ioannis Kapodistrias, was shot dead in 1831; the mark of a bullet is still shown in the wall. Above the town, a staircase of hundreds of steps climbs to the Palamidi fortress.
- Hydrastop on the way
A day by boat from Ermioni, about an hour and a quarter’s drive from Nafplio; the crossing takes about half an hour, and the car stays on the mainland. No cars are allowed on the island — goods go up the stepped lanes on donkeys — and in the 1960s the singer Leonard Cohen bought a house here and wrote some of his early songs.
- Epidaurusstop on the way
A theatre of the fourth century before the common era for some fourteen thousand people, whose acoustics are so fine that a coin dropped on the stage is heard in the top row; Greek plays are still performed in it on summer nights.
- Ancient Corinthstop on the way
The seven columns still standing of the Temple of Apollo are of the sixth century before the common era. The Apostle Paul lived here for a year and a half and, by the Book of Acts, preached first in the synagogue; a stone lintel inscribed in Greek “Synagogue of the Hebrews”, found by the road to the port, is kept at the site.
- Diakoptoone night
A village on the Gulf of Corinth at the mouth of the Vouraikos gorge. From its station the Odontotos, a rack railway opened in 1896, climbs some twenty-two kilometres up the gorge to Kalavryta, where in December 1943 German troops shot the men and boys of the town.
- Rio–Antirrio Bridgestop on the way
Opened in 2004 across the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, some 2,900 metres long, among the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world. The strait is an earthquake zone, so the piers are not fixed into the seabed but rest on beds of gravel, free to shift.
- Nafpaktosstop on the way
The Venetians’ Lepanto, a small harbour inside walls that climb to the castle. Off this coast in 1571 the Holy League destroyed the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto; the young Miguel de Cervantes fought in it and lost the use of his left hand, and his statue stands by the harbour.
- Galaxidione night
In the nineteenth century this little harbour was home to a fleet of hundreds of sailing ships, and the captains’ stone mansions still line its two bays; steam ruined it, and the maritime museum tells the story. On Clean Monday, the first day of Orthodox Lent, the town holds a battle of coloured flour in the streets.
- Delphistop on the way
The Greeks believed this mountainside was the navel of the world, and kings came to ask the oracle of Apollo before going to war. The museum holds the bronze Charioteer of about 470 before the common era, found buried under a rockfall, which kept it whole.
- Thermopylaestop on the way
Here in 480 before the common era Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans held the narrow pass against the Persian army of Xerxes for three days. The sea has since pulled back, and the strip a few metres wide between cliff and water is now a plain kilometres across; the hot springs that gave the place its name, the Hot Gates, still run beside the road.
- Lamiaone night
A provincial capital under a castle that has watched the road between southern and northern Greece since antiquity; in the fourteenth century it was held by the Catalan Company. The archaeological museum is housed in the nineteenth-century barracks inside the castle walls.
- Trikalastop on the way
Homer’s Trikka, which sent to Troy as its commanders the two sons of Asclepius, the god of healing. By the river stands the Koursoum mosque of the sixteenth century, attributed to the great Ottoman architect Sinan; its name comes from its great lead-covered dome, kurşun being lead in Turkish.
- Meteora2 nights
Monasteries built from the fourteenth century on top of rock pillars hundreds of metres high; for centuries the monks and their supplies were hauled up in nets on ropes, and the story goes that a rope was replaced only when it broke. Six monasteries are still active.
- Vale of Tempestop on the way
A gorge of the Pineios river, some ten kilometres long, between Olympus and Ossa. In myth Apollo was cleansed here after killing the Python, and the laurel for the victors’ crowns at the Pythian Games of Delphi was cut in this valley; a suspension bridge crosses the river to the cave chapel of Agia Paraskevi.
- Litochoroone night
The town at the foot of Mount Olympus, the seat of the gods, whose highest peak, Mytikas, rises to 2,918 metres. It was first climbed only in 1913, by Christos Kakkalos, a hunter from Litochoro, with two Swiss, Frédéric Boissonnas and Daniel Baud-Bovy; the path up the Enipeas gorge starts at the edge of town.
- Dionstop on the way
The sacred city of the Macedonians under Olympus, named for Zeus. Here Alexander the Great offered sacrifice before setting out against Persia in 334 before the common era; today the sanctuaries stand among springs and reeds, and the floor mosaics are shown in the museum in the village.
- Verginastop on the way
In 1977 the archaeologist Manolis Andronikos opened here an unlooted royal tomb, held to be that of Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, with a gold chest bearing the Macedonian star. The tombs are shown inside the mound, in the dark.
- Thessaloniki3 nights
For four centuries after the expulsion from Spain in 1492 Thessaloniki was a city with a Jewish majority, where Ladino was spoken in the port and the harbour closed on the Sabbath. In 1943 some fifty thousand of its Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and almost all were murdered. The Jewish Museum and the Monastirioton synagogue, which survived the war, tell the story.
What it costs
Eighty dollars a night is the room. The car, the fuel and the tolls are yours: the motorways out of Athens, to the Peloponnese and north toward Thessaloniki are tolled at booths along the way, in cash or by card, and over the whole route the tolls add up to several tens of euros. Fuel in Greece is among the dearest in Europe. Entrance tickets to the great sites are paid at the gate.
What to know
Three things. One: central Athens. A ring of restricted traffic, the Daktylios, limits cars in the centre on weekdays by the last digit of the plate, and parking there is scarce — collect the car on the way out of Athens, not on the way in. Two: Hydra has no cars at all, by law; leave the car on the mainland at Ermioni and take the boat across. Three: the mountain roads to Delphi and Meteora are narrow, with goats and buses on the bends; carry an international driving permit with your licence.
Roads, tolls and rules
Greece drives on the right. The motorways are modern and fast; off them the roads climb and twist, and an hour on the map is often an hour and a half. Rental cars are mostly small and manual; automatics must be booked ahead. Petrol stations close early in the villages — fill up in the towns. The days are short on purpose: none is longer than about a hundred and sixty kilometres, so the way north from the Peloponnese takes four days, crossing the Gulf of Corinth on the Rio–Antirrio bridge, which is tolled.
Travel Greece: From Athens to Thessaloniki
The route on our site, with a room up to $80 every night.