We took this on holiday with us to the SW Peloponnese and found it a useful guide to the region.
Ancient sites are covered in detail, and as a classicist by training myself I was on the lookout for inaccuracies. However, the accounts of ancient mythology and history appeared to be not only accurate but to reflect recent scholarship (as for example in the coverage of Bronze Age society). I suspect there may have been a professional classical consultant, but one isn’t credited.
Remember that details of opening times may change. Nestor’s Palace no longer opens in the afternoons and some exhibits such as the Antikythera Mechanism in the National Archæological Museum in Athens have been re-arranged. The guide includes the new Acropolis Museum; the authors have firm views on the removal of antiquities from their original locations.
We especially appreciated information on some lesser-known sites such as Messene. The authors are explicit about a matter on which other guidebooks can be coy and which postcards ignore completely: the fact that the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae has been shrouded in a tent for nearly thirty years.
We didn’t make so much use of the more general information on beaches, restaurants etc. but it didn’t seem wide of the mark when we did. The black-and-white pages of our copy were robust, but some of the colour pages near the front quickly started to become detached.
- Publisher: Cadogan Guides; 2nd edition (June 17, 2008)
- ISBN-10: 1860113966
- ISBN-13: 978-1860113963