Peloponnese

• 1. Introduction

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  The Peloponnese hangs from the body of Greece like a hand reaching into the Mediterranean, connected to the rest of the mainland by nothing more than a narrow strip of land at Corinth. This peninsula has a name rooted in myth: Pelops, a hero of ancient Greek legend, was said to have conquered the entire region, and so the land became Peloponnesos, meaning the island or peninsula of Pelops. More than three thousand years of recorded history have passed since that name took hold, and in that time the Peloponnese has been home to the first Olympic Games, the heart of Spartan power, a Frankish principality, a Byzantine despotate, an Ottoman province, and a theater of war that helped give birth to the modern Greek state. What draws listeners into this story is not any single event but the sheer density of civilizations that have claimed this land, built on it, fought over it, and been buried beneath it. How did a peninsula of just over twenty-one thousand square kilometers accumulate so many layers? And what remains of them today?

• 2. Land and Its Shape

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  Mount Taygetus rises to 2,407 meters above sea level in the southern Peloponnese, making it the highest peak on the peninsula. The terrain it anchors is not unusual: the interior is broadly mountainous, though extensive lowlands open up in the west, in the Evrotas Valley in the south, and in the Argolid Peninsula in the northeast. The peninsula pushes four south-pointing fingers into the sea, the Messenian, the Mani, Cape Malea, and the Argolid. Between them, three gulfs carve deep into the land. From antiquity through the present, this indented coastline has made the Peloponnese a place of countless beaches and has shaped how its people moved goods, built cities, and fought wars. The Alfeios River, running 110 kilometers through the west, is the longest on the peninsula; the Evrotas in the south reaches 82 kilometers. The entire region is earthquake-prone, and one ancient quake left a visible mark: the island of Elafonisos was once part of the peninsula itself, until the 365 Crete earthquake tore it away. At the northern tip of the peninsula, the Rio-Antirrio bridge, completed in 2004, now links the western Peloponnese to western Greece across the Gulf of Corinth.

• 3. Bronze Age and Classical Power

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  Mycenae, Pylos, and Tiryns were the palace centers of the Mycenaean civilization, mainland Greece's first major civilization, which dominated the Peloponnese during the Bronze Age. Greek mythology drew heavily on this era: Heracles, Perseus, and the entire sweep of the Trojan War are set against its landscape. The Mycenaean civilization collapsed suddenly at the end of the second millennium BC; archaeological research shows widespread destruction at its cities and palaces. The Greek Dark Ages followed, marked by an absence of written records. Recovery came slowly, and in 776 BC the first Olympic Games were held at Olympia, in Elis in the western Peloponnese. That date is sometimes used to mark the opening of classical antiquity. The Peloponnese then became the axis of Greek power: Sparta, Corinth, Argos, and Megalopolis all stood on the peninsula, and it formed the core of the Peloponnesian League. Soldiers from the peninsula fought at Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea against the Persians. The Peloponnesian War of 431-404 BC ended in Spartan victory over Athens. Then, in 338 BC, almost the entire Peloponnese joined Philip's League of Corinth, with Sparta notably holding out until 331 BC when it was forced to join. When Rome absorbed Greece, the Achaean League fell in 146 BC; the Romans razed Corinth that year, massacred its population, and turned the peninsula into the province of Achaea.

• 4. Byzantines, Slavs, and Franks

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  After the Roman Empire divided in 395, the Peloponnese passed to Byzantium, and within two years the Visigothic king Alaric had raided it. The resulting devastation prompted the construction of the Hexamilion wall across the Isthmus of Corinth. Through much of late antiquity the peninsula remained urban: the 6th-century geographer Hierocles counted 26 cities in the region. By the later 6th century, however, building activity had nearly stopped everywhere except in Constantinople, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Athens. Scholars have debated the cause; more recent analysis ties the urban decline to the collapse of the long-distance trade networks that had sustained city life, alongside the withdrawal of imperial troops and administration. Slavic groups arrived and settled during the 7th and 8th centuries, leaving behind abundant Slavic place names across the peninsula. Yet a 2017 human genetics study found that the Peloponnesians carry little admixture from Slavic homeland populations and are genetically much closer to Sicilians and southern Italians, suggesting the Greek population maintained strong continuity even through those centuries of migration. Byzantine reassertion came in stages: in 783, the logothete Staurakios campaigned from Constantinople into Greece and the Peloponnese, capturing many prisoners and forcing the Slavs to pay tribute. By the turn of the 9th century, the entire peninsula had been formed into the new thema of Peloponnesos, with its capital at Corinth. Then, in 1205, Crusaders under William of Champlitte and Geoffrey of Villehardouin swept south after the destruction of Byzantine Constantinople and conquered the peninsula against sporadic local resistance. They established the Principality of Achaea, divided the land into twelve baronies centered on newly built castles, and brought the name Morea into wide use, a word most commonly thought to derive from the mulberry tree whose leaves mirror the shape of the peninsula.

• 5. Despotate, Ottomans, and Albanians

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  Mystras, a fortress and palace complex near ancient Sparta, became the seat of Byzantine power in the Morea from 1262, after William II of Villehardouin ceded it to Byzantium as the price of his freedom following the Battle of Pelagonia. In 1349, the Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos reorganized the territory as an appanage for his son Manuel, who became its first despot. The Ottoman Turks began raiding the peninsula around that time, and the raids intensified after 1387 when Evrenos Bey took control and forced both Byzantine and Frankish rulers to acknowledge Ottoman suzerainty. Albanian settlers arrived in overlapping waves across this same period. One large group, numbering 10,000, settled in Arcadia during the reign of Theodore I Palaiologos and spread into Messenia, Argolis, Elis, and Achaia. Military records from 1425 counted roughly 30,000 Albanian men capable of carrying arms in the Peloponnese. By the mid-15th century, Albanians constituted at least one-third of the peninsula's population. Ottoman pressure never fully relented: Sultan Murad II destroyed the Hexamilion wall in 1446, opening the peninsula to invasion. His successor Mehmed II captured Constantinople in 1453. The two despots, Demetrios Palaiologos and Thomas Palaiologos, had failed to send any aid, as Morea was still recovering from a recent Ottoman attack. After years of dynastic incompetence and unpaid tribute, Mehmed entered the Morea in May 1460. By the end of that summer, virtually all Greek-held cities had submitted. A few pockets held out longer; Graitzas Palaiologos and his garrison at Salmeniko Castle resisted until July 1461, when they escaped to Venetian territory.

• 6. Revolution and Modern Greece

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  Rebels took control of Kalamata on the 23rd of March 1821, and that act in the southern Peloponnese is where the Greek War of Independence began. Greek and Albanian insurgents moved quickly, and within months the entire peninsula except for a few coastal forts and the main Turkish garrison at Tripolitsa was under Greek control. Theodoros Kolokotronis captured Tripolitsa in September 1821, a turning point in the war. Civil war among the insurgents broke out in 1824, giving the Ottoman Egyptian commander Ibrahim Pasha an opening to land in the peninsula in 1825. The devastation Ibrahim's Egyptian troops caused was severe enough to draw direct intervention from the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire. The decisive naval Battle of Navarino was fought in 1827 off Pylos on the western coast, where a combined British, French, and Russian fleet destroyed the Turko-Egyptian fleet. The city of Nafplion, on the eastern coast, became the first capital of independent Greece. The 19th and early 20th centuries brought relative poverty to the peninsula, and large numbers of its people emigrated to Athens, the United States, and Australia. The Second World War and the subsequent Greek Civil War brought some of the worst atrocities seen anywhere in Greece. Living standards rose sharply after Greece joined the European Union in 1981. Then, in late August 2007, wildfires swept across large parts of the Peloponnese, killing 77 people and causing damage to villages and forests on a scale that made it one of the largest environmental disasters in modern Greek history.

• 7. Sites and Tastes

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  Pavlopetri, in Vatika Bay off the southeastern coast, is the oldest known underwater city in the world, dating from the early Bronze Age around 3500 BC. It sits alongside the peninsula's many excavated sites, from the Bronze Age fortress-town of Tiryns to the medieval Byzantine complex at Mystras, both UNESCO World Heritage Sites along with Mycenae, Olympia, and Epidaurus. Bassae, site of the temple of Epikourios Apollo, was Greece's first property to receive UNESCO recognition. Above water, the peninsula also holds living traditions in food and drink. The Kalamata olive is among the region's best-known products. The Nemea wine region produces red wines from the Agiorgitiko grape; the Mantineia region makes white wine from Moschofilero; and fortified red wine is made near Patras from Mavrodafni grapes, all carrying Protected Designation of Origin status. Regional dishes range from Syglino, a cured pork preparation from the Mani Peninsula, to Regali, a lamb soup also associated with the Mani, and Tentura, a drink from the Patras area. Patras itself is the largest city on the peninsula, with a population of 170,896 recorded in the 2011 census, and has been home to the Kalamata Acropolis, a medieval fortress still standing within the modern city of Kalamata. The peninsula's Diros caves preserve evidence of human presence stretching back to between 4000 and 3000 BC, a reminder that the layers of history running beneath the Peloponnese extend deeper than any single empire or dynasty.