Many a vanished year and age,

And tempest’s breath and battle’s rage

Have swept over Corinth; yet she stands,

A fortress formed to freedom’s hands.

Lord Byron

     excerpt from The Siege of Corinth (1816)

When it comes to the ancient Greek world, almost everything seems to be about the great rival city-states, Athens and Sparta. The undeniable importance of these two cities often overshadows and undermines that of others; a gross injustice, to say the least, especially in the case of ancient Corinth.

On this tour we aim to trace the rich cultural heritage of Corinth as it echoes throughout the archaeological remains of a once prosperous metropolis.

The archaeological site of Corinth has been excavated by the American School of Classical Studies ever since 1896, making it the School’s longest running excavation.

Monuments from various time periods tell the story of a city that suffered total destruction and was reborn out of its ashes: the Temple of Apollo, the Fountains of Glauke and Peirene, the Roman Forum, the Orator’s Podium, the Frankish district are among the landmarks we are going to visit, as we walk in the shadow of the fortified Acrocorinth, the imposing rock that rises behind the city, like a gigantic fist set out against the sky.

But it is also a story of the people that have been linked to Corinth throughout the ages, be it the daring hero Bellerophon, cunning King Sisyphus, ill-fated Medea, the resourceful tyrant Periander, the sharp-tongued courtesan Lais, the cynic philosopher Diogenes, the Roman general Lucius Mummius, the Apostle Paul, Crusaders, Lord Byron, even Henry Miller, to name but a few.

“Yet she stands” says Byron of Corinth, a city that, one way or another, stood the harsh test of time; a city that, rest assured, will have stolen the spotlight from Sparta and Athens by the end of the tour.