The Blog of an aspiring Classicist

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Epidaurus – An ancient city in which stands a world famous ancient theatre.

On my first day in Greece, we landed in Athens, rented a car and started to drive. Our first destination was the ancient city of Epidaurus, only just short of a 2 hour drive from Athens. The scenery of our drive was quite magnificent, beautiful sweeping hills covered in luscious trees. It looked like something from a painting. Once we arrived at our destination, it began to rain! Despite the weather not being on our side, we braved the rain and began our journey to visit the archaeological site. Once we bought our tickets, we walked up the hill towards the theatre. I had done research prior to our trip on the ancient cities we would be visiting, but google did not do Epidaurus justice! The theatre was truly stunning. Thousands of seats tiered towards the sky focused around a circular stage (something I believe would be called ‘theatre in the round’). We ascended the stairs and made it to the highest tiering of seats, and the view was just breathtaking. Imagine being surrounded by dozens of hills and below you is a stone theatre, next to an archaeological site. This is my version of the perfect picture! We sat on the benches above, admiring the views and reading the book I had bought about this specific theatre. I can only imagine how magical it must have been to see Greek theatre performed there. After walking through the different levels of seating, we made our way to the archaeological site. On our way, we escaped the rain by visiting the museum, which was surprisingly small. I enjoyed admiring the sculptures, some of which I had read about previously! After a stimulating stroll in the museum, we continued to the archaeological site. The site consisted of the remains of the healing sanctuaries. After a walk through the site, astonished by its symmetry, we drove back to our hotel. Overall, I was extremely impressed with Epidaurus and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Classics or the ancient world as it is relatively quiet and extremely interesting!