Corinth

Corinth stands at the narrow neck of land that ties the Peloponnese to mainland Greece, about an hour and a quarter west of Athens. The modern town, laid out beside the Gulf of Corinth, was founded as New Corinth in 1858 after an earthquake destroyed the old settlement, and rebuilt again after a further quake in 1928. It is a practical, workaday place rather than a resort, but its surroundings hold some of the country's most memorable sights.

The most famous is the Corinth Canal, cut through the isthmus and opened in 1893. Barely 21 metres wide at its base, with sheer limestone walls rising as much as 90 metres, it is a startling sliver of blue slicing the land in two. A roadside bridge lets you look straight down its length as the occasional ship threads through.

A few kilometres inland lies Ancient Corinth, once among the wealthiest cities of the Greek and Roman worlds. Here you can walk among the columns of the 6th-century-BC Temple of Apollo, the marketplace, and the Roman forum that St Paul knew when he preached to the Corinthians. An excellent site museum gathers sculpture, mosaics and finds from centuries of excavation.

Rising sharply behind the ruins is Acrocorinth, a monumental fortified acropolis on a crag some 575 metres high. Occupied from archaic times into the 19th century and layered with Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian and Ottoman defences, it is often called the most impressive citadel of mainland Greece. The climb rewards you with gates, ruined mosques and vast views over the isthmus and both gulfs.

Most travellers treat Corinth as a first stop on the way into the Peloponnese, taking in the canal, the ancient site and the fortress in a day before pushing on to Nafplio, Mycenae or the coast. The nearby beaches and the spa town of Loutraki, just across the water, make an easy add-on if you want to linger a little longer.