A homebound Irish couple accosted me recently at Corfu airport.
"We came here because of what you wrote in The Irish Times . . . " I waited in trepidation. "We loved it!" They are seasoned travellers. They found Corfu beautiful and affordable. It's a relief to know that one can extol the beauty of a place and still tell the truth. Mission accomplished.
I’ve been travelling recently and I can now say that, whatever the charms of Corfu, those of Nafplion, in the southern Peloponnese, are their equal.
When I first visited Nafplion 50 years ago, it was merely a small town living on its reputation as the site of the first parliament of independent Greece up to 1834, when the government moved to Athens.
Nafplion is dominated by a Venetian castle, reached by 999 very steep steps, up which, at the vigorous age of 15, I ran in pursuit of a girl who could run faster than me. This time, pleading old age and lack of inducement, I stayed on the ground level.
Today Nafplion has expanded into “Nafplion New Town”, a series of suburbs. This is a welcome feature of many Greek towns of historical importance, such as Mycenae, Tiryns, Epidauros and Argos: the tourists are serviced on the prehistoric site while you live and shop in the new town. It brings a whole new meaning to “I got it in Argos”.
Tales of two cities
For tourist purposes, separating the old cities from the new towns is a clever strategy. Suburbs are generally unexciting but affordable and – unless exceptionally well-designed – unattractive social necessity.
Athens is the prime Greek example, with miles of low-rise suburbs lining the arterial exit roads, some of them very squalid, stretching in every direction from the ancient centre. It’s quite a shock, if you know your Greek mythology, to see a motorway exit sign for ‘Eleusis’. One might wonder what 21st-century mysteries it can offer, until you learn that it is home to Greece’s largest oil refinery.
Corfu has its quality shops, especially the jewellery for which it’s famous. But in Nafplion’s stylish streetscape the shops aimed at tourists display none of the tawdry, made-in-China tat that clogs up the narrow laneways of Corfu.
With so many hotels, tavernas and cafes winding down at the end of the season, it’s possible to walk streets that aren’t clogged with camera-toting visitors in order to appreciate the range of local produce, proudly offered in craft shops and delicatessens. Everything is tastefully displayed, perhaps so much so that it runs the danger of becoming twee. In the old town, there’s not a supermarket in sight. But in the “new town” on its outskirts, Cash & Carry rules.
Nafplion is still the centre of the manufacture of komboloi, the traditional Greek "worry beads" that resemble a rosary but are, in fact, an antidote to anxiety. Preferably (and expensively) made of amber, komboloi can also be had in coral, ivory, mother-of-pearl and (the cheapest) synthetic beads. Even if you don't think you need them, the warmth of the amber in the palm of the hand is reassuring.
Nafplion is perhaps fortunate in that, unlike Corfu, it can’t accommodate cruise ships. The inmates of these behemoths normally spend next to nothing as they linger until departure time six or eight hours later. They are of almost zero economic value to their host towns, but they help spread the word: many travellers will return to savour at a more leisurely pace the beauty they have seen so briefly.
Catering to all
Greece, like any other country trying to expand its tourist potential, is torn between the needs of visitors and the needs of the local population. And, like any country with a rapidly expanding urban lifestyle, it is torn between modernisation and the preservation of the traditional and authentic.
In the past weeks we’ve seen ministerial announcements about this year’s record-breaking tourist influx (18 million, up 10 per cent on 2013) and about intentions to develop niche markets, especially cultural tourism. We hear this every year, but with the need to put Athens itself back on the tourist map after the disturbances of the past four years, it’s welcome.
Nafplion could give the National Tourism Organisation some valuable pointers: it has a very fine local history museum (one of the best I’ve ever seen) established by the Peloponnese Folklore Foundation. Local pride exudes from this and similar institutions (including an annexe of the National Gallery), not least because the Peloponnese was the principal site of the war of independence, which was nasty, brutish and long (1821 to 30). As a result, it has a significance for the rest of Greece, which Nafplion tastefully exploits.
Returning there after so long was a pleasant revelation.
