Galaxidi

Galaxidi sits on a low peninsula on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, in the region of Phocis, its two natural harbours cradling a fleet of fishing boats and yachts. Across the water rise the mountains of the Peloponnese, and behind it the olive groves climb towards Delphi, half an hour inland. For all its calm today, this was once one of the great seafaring towns of Greece.

In the nineteenth century Galaxidi grew wealthy building and sailing wooden merchant ships, and its captains poured their money into fine stone houses. The result is a townscape of dignified neoclassical mansions with carved doorways and shuttered windows, ranged along cobbled lanes that slope down to the water. Where other Greek ports rebuilt in concrete, Galaxidi kept its architecture, and the whole town is protected as a result.

The story is told in the Maritime and Historical Museum, founded in 1928 and reckoned the oldest of its kind in Greece. Housed in a handsome nineteenth-century mansion, it gathers ship models, figureheads, navigational instruments, captains' chests and a celebrated series of watercolours of the town's sailing ships in ports around the world.

Galaxidi is a place for slow days. You can walk the pine-shaded path around the headland past the church of Agios Nikolaos, eat fresh fish at a waterfront taverna, and watch the light change over the gulf. The town is at its most spirited on Clean Monday, the start of Lent, when the peculiar and joyful flour-war carnival known as Alevromoutzouromata covers the streets and everyone in it with coloured flour.

Many travellers use Galaxidi as a restful counterpoint to Delphi, sleeping by the sea and driving up to the ancient site for the morning. With its harbours, its mansions and its unhurried air, it offers a gentler, saltier side of central Greece, and one of the prettiest waterfronts on the whole gulf.