If you travel to Greece, visit this Non-Top-10 place

Messene — photo taken by the author

The best ancient place to visit is in Peloponnese.

I was traveling with my wife for 6 weeks in Greece. We started in Igoumenitsa, traveled through the south, visited Sparta, Korinth, then Athen, and straight to the north to Thessaloniki and back again to the south. We were looking for famous ancient places.

So we followed some recommendations and visited the Akropolis, Delphi, Epidaurus, Sparta, Thermophiles, Mykene, Nafplion, and Mystras.

If you google it you will find something like this.

screenshot from google search

Don´t understand me wrong. Most of them are worth it to visit.

But nothing beats Messene IMHO.

We found the location by accident. And this was just awesome.

As we were driving from Kalo Nero to Kalamata we looked for some sightseeing locations in this area. Google mentioned “Messene”.

On the way to it, we passed a gigantic gate, the Arcadian Gate. A couple of minutes later we came to a small parking place. Nearly missed it.

Then we found Messene.

We bought tickets for just 6€ each and went in.

Impressive. Looking back having all other places in mind it was just the best.

7 reasons for that:

• only 6€ for an adult ticket
• you can visit everything, no fences except 2 important temple ruins
• you can stand in the middle of a theater
• you can stand in the middle of the stadium
• there is an active excavation
• it is not well known so there were only a few visitors to this huge place
• and it is huge area, plan 1,5h minimum

Here are some impressions:

stadium — photo taken by the author

theater — photo taken by the author

overview — photo taken by the author

overview — photo taken by the author

For us it was one of the best parts in Greece. If you have the chance to see it, don´t hesitate.