ΕΠΙΔΑΥΡΟΣ / Επιδαυρος
Theater of Epidavros (c. 300 B.C.)
Nestled in a leafy valley some 20 miles east of Nafplio, Epidavros was once the most famous healing center in the ancient Greek world. It was like an ancient Lourdes, a place of hope where the sick came to be treated by doctor-priests acting on behalf of Asklepios, the god of medicine.
The site began as a temple to Apollo, god of light, who was worshipped here in Mycenaean times. By the fourth century B.C., Apollo had been replaced by his son, Asklepios (who was said to have been born here). Because pilgrims prayed to Asklepios for health, a sanctuary was needed, with a temple, altars, and statues to the gods. The sanctuary reached the height of its popularity in the fourth and third centuries B.C., when it boasted medical facilities, housing for the sick, mineral baths, a stadium for athletic competitions, and a theater.
These days the famous theater is Epidavros’ star attraction. It’s the finest and best-preserved of all of Greece’s ancient theaters—and that’s saying something in a country with 132 of them. Epidavros also has some (far) less interesting sights. The once-great sanctuary is now just a lonely field of rubble. The small Archaeological Museum displays a few crumbled fragments of statuary. But the theater alone makes Epidavros worth the side-trip.
Cost: €6 includes the theater, Archaeological Museum, and the rest of the Sanctuary of Epidavros archaeological site.
Hours: Sanctuary/theater—daily April-Oct 8:00-20:00 (in theory), off-season 8:00-15:00; museum—same hours as sanctuary/theater except on Mon, when it opens at 12:30. Tel. 27350-22009, www.culture.gr.
Don’t count on these opening hours. Though accurate when this book went to press, opening hours are likely to fluctuate wildly at the whims of the government and the Greek economy. Check locally before planning your day.
Getting There: From Nafplio it’s a 45-minute drive to the east, along winding roads. Head east out of Nafplio toward the town of Ligourio/Λυγουριό, then carry on along the main road to the archaeological site, just on Ligourio’s outskirts. If you’re connecting Epidavros and Mycenae (see next chapter; allow 45-60 minutes), you can avoid driving all the way back into Nafplio by watching carefully for signs to either site, which direct you to a roundabout outside central Nafplio. The site has plenty of free parking.
You can also reach Epidavros from Nafplio by bus (Mon-Sat 3/day—buses usually leave Nafplio at 10:15, 12:00, and 14:30; 1/day on Sun—likely around 14:30; possibly fewer buses Oct-April, 45 minutes, €3). Return buses from Epidavros to Nafplio typically leave in the afternoon (3/day, last bus usually around 18:00). Confirm all bus schedules locally.
It’s possible, though not terribly efficient, to see both Epidavros and Mycenae in one long day from Nafplio by bus: Assuming schedules haven’t changed significantly since my last visit, you could take the 10:00 bus from Nafplio to Mycenae, spend about 2.5 hours at the site, and return to Nafplio on the 13:00 bus; then catch the 14:30 bus to Epidavros, tour the site, and return to Nafplio on the last bus, arriving back in the city about 19:00 (this wouldn’t work on Sun, when there are no buses to Mycenae). Taking the bus to Epidavros first and then to Mycenae doesn’t work as well (giving you only 30 minutes at Mycenae).
You can also get to Epidavros by taxi from Nafplio (€50-70 round-trip with one-hour wait).
From Athens, buses head to Nafplio, then continue on to Epidavros (2/day, 2.5 hours, might require a transfer in Nafplio—ask when you buy your ticket).
Name Variation: Epidavros can be spelled “Epidaurus” in English. Confusingly, many locations in this area carry the name Epidavros/Επιδαυρος. Don’t be distracted by signs to Nea (“New”) Epidavros/νεα Επιδαυρος, or Palea (“Old”) Epidavros/Παλαιά Επιδαυρος, which will route you to a modern coastal town far from the theater.
Length of This Tour: Unfortunately, Epidavros is not really “on the way” to anything else. Budget two to three hours for the round-trip excursion from Nafplio. You can see the entire site in an hour, but it’s delightful to linger at the theater.
Services: There’s not much here. A simple café/restaurant is along the lane between the parking and ticket office. WCs are near the parking lot (outside the site entry), and more are near the museum (inside the site).
Performances: The theater is still used today for performances on summer weekends during the annual Athens & Epidavros Festival (generally July-Aug Fri-Sat at around 21:00—arrive by 20:00; ideally buy your tickets the day before). A schedule is available online at www.greekfestival.gr. Special buses run from Athens and Nafplio on performance nights.
Starring: The most intact (and most spectacularly located) theater from ancient Greece.
From the parking lot, follow signs up the long lane to the ticket desk. Buy your ticket and enter. The theater, sanctuary, and museum are all a couple minutes’ walk from one another. You basically look at the stunning theater, climb the seats, take some photos, try out the acoustics—and that’s it. The other sights are pretty skimpy.
• From the entry gate, climb the stairs on the right up to the theater. Enter the theater, stand in the center of the circular “orchestra,” look up at the seats, and take it all in. (I’ve marked your spot with a weathered marble stump, where fellow theatergoers might be posing, singing, or speaking.)
It’s a magnificent sight, built into the side of a tree-covered hill. The perfect symmetry of its two tiers of seating stands as a tribute to Greek mathematics. It’s easy to locate the main elements of a typical Greek theater: the round orchestra, the smaller stage area (skene), and the seating (kavea).
The audience sat in the bleacher-like seats (made of limestone blocks) that were set into the hillside, wrapping partially around the performers. Together, the lower rows and 21 upper rows (added by the Romans, c. 50 B.C.) seated up to 15,000. The spectators looked down on the orchestra, a circular area 70 feet across where the group of actors known as the chorus sang and danced. Behind the orchestra are the rectangular foundations of the skene. (These days, the skene is usually covered with a modern stage.) The skene had a raised stage where actors performed, a back wall for scenery, dressing rooms in the back, and various doorways and ramps where actors could make dramatic entrances and exits. The skene was not very tall (one or two stories at most), so spectators in the upper seats could look over it during the performance, taking in the view of the valley below.
The Greeks invented modern theater, and many plays written 2,500 years ago are still performed today.
Greek drama began in prehistoric times with the songs, poems, and rituals performed to honor Dionysus, the god of wine and orgiastic revelry. By the sixth century B.C., these fertility rites developed into song competitions between choruses of men who sang hymns about Dionysus, heroes, and gods. The contests were held at religious festivals as a form of worship.
Later, Athenian playwrights (such as Thespis, the first “thespian”) introduced actors who acted out the story through spoken monologues, alternating with the chorus’s songs. Over time, these monologues became dialogues between several actors, and the spoken scenes became as important as the songs of the chorus. Plays evolved from Dionysian hymns to stories of Dionysus to stories of all sorts—myths of gods and heroes, and comedies about contemporary events. By the Golden Age (c. 450-400 B.C.), Athens was the center of a golden age of theater, premiering plays by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes.
Greek plays fall into three categories. Tragedies, the oldest and most prestigious, were super-serious plays about gods and legends that usually ended with the hero dying. Comedies, which emerged during the Golden Age, were witty satires about contemporary people and events. “Satyr plays” spoofed the seriousness of tragedies—things like Oedipus with a massive strap-on phallus.
Greek drama, like Greek art and philosophy, put human beings at center stage. The theaters were built into the natural slopes of hillsides, giving the audience a glimpse of human emotions against the awesome backdrop of nature. The plays showed mortals wrestling with how to find their place in a cosmos ruled by the gods and Fate.
The acoustics are superb—from the orchestra, whisper to your partner on the top row (higher frequencies carry better over the limestone seats). The ancient acoustical engineering is remarkable: The marble circle in the middle of the orchestra (in front of the skene...that is, pro-scenium) sits over a hollow underground space that projects voices up to the seats. Though it seems counter-intuitive, for the best effect, actors pointed their heads downward, toward this spot, rather than upward toward the spectators.
Picture a typical performance of a Greek tragedy here at this theater. Before the show began, spectators would file in the same way tourists do today, through the passageway between the seating and the skene. The performance began with a sober monologue by a lone actor, setting the scene. Next, the chorus members would enter in a solemn parade, singing as they took their place in the orchestra circle. Then the story would unfold through dialogue on the stage, interspersed with songs by the chorus members. At play’s end, the chorus sang a song summing up the moral of the play, then paraded out the way they came.
Speaking actors performed on the raised stage, while the chorus members flitted about in the circular orchestra at the foot of the stage. Traditionally, there were only three actors in a play, each playing multiple roles. Actors wore masks with a hole for the mouth (such as the grinning mask of comedy or the drooping mouth of tragedy). Actors were always men; to play a woman they wore a female mask, women’s clothes, and wooden breasts.
Actors could enter and exit by ramps on either side of the stage, through doorways at the back of the stage, or via the same passageways tourists enter today. For costume changes, they exited to the backstage dressing rooms. There was no curtain at the front of the stage.
The chorus—a group of three to fifty singers—was a key part of Greek plays. They commented on the action through songs, accompanied by flute or lyre (small harp), and danced around in the orchestra (literally, “dancing space”). The lead chorus member often entered the onstage action and exchanged dialogue with characters.
During the course of the play, demons could pop up through a trap door in the stage, and gods could make their dramatic appearance atop the roof of the skene. The most famous stage gimmick was the cherry-picker crane that lowered an actor down from the heavens at the play’s climax—the deus ex machina (“god from a machine”).
For about seven centuries (c. 300 B.C.-A.D. 400), the theater at Epidavros hosted song contests and plays, until the area was looted by invading Gauls. Over time, the theater became buried in dirt, preserving it until it was unearthed in almost original condition in 1881. Today it is once again a working theater.
Even if you’re not here for one of the theater’s official performances, you can still enjoy the show: Tourists can take turns performing monologues, jokes, arias, and more. If there’s an actor inside you, speak up. Try out any of the ancient Greek passages (see sidebar). Or just clap your hands loudly to test the echo.
When you’ve finished your turn on stage, climb the stairs to the seats to join the spectators. Only from up here can you fully appreciate the incredible acoustics—not to mention the remarkable scale and intactness of the place. No matter how high you climb, you can hear every word of the naturally amplified performances down below...all while enjoying the backdrop of sweeping mountains and olive groves.
• Walk down the stairs across from the theater, to find the...
The first room (of three) in this small museum displays various steles (inscribed stone tablets). Some of these document successful cases where patients were healed here by the god Asklepios. Others are rules governing the hospital. The only people to be excluded from the sanctuary were the terminally ill and pregnant women (both were considered too high-risk—their deaths would sully the sanctuary’s reputation). The room also holds a case displaying some medical instruments that’ll make you glad you were born after the invention of anesthetics.
The second room has many (headless) statues of gods who were invoked in the healing process—most of them textbook examples of that wonderfully relaxed contrapposto (S-shaped) stance that was revived centuries later by Renaissance sculptors (find the statue on the left striking an especially sassy pose). The columns and cornice on display were part of the sanctuary’s impressive entryway (propylaea).
The star of the final room is an extremely well-preserved capital from a Corinthian column. The builders of the temple buried it on the site, perhaps as an offering to the gods. Archaeologists who dug it up in the 19th century were astonished at its condition; it may have been the prototype for all the capitals in the temple complex. The room also displays two replicas of small, square reliefs (left wall) showing the god Asklepios on his throne. Asklepios is often depicted as a kindly, bearded man, carrying a staff with a snake wound around it, the forerunner of today’s medical symbol.
• Up the stairs, beyond the museum, is the sprawling field of ruins called the...
While Epidavros’ theater is stunning, the ruins of the sanctuary itself (in a huge open field between the theater and parking lot) are a distant also-ran compared with those at other great ancient sites, such as Delphi and Olympia. The various ruins are well-described in English, but precious little survives.
Patients spent the night in a large hall (katagogion, near the museum) connected to the temple, hoping to be visited in a dream by Asklepios, who could give them the secret to their cure. In the morning, priests interpreted the dreams and told the patient what to do to be healed...by the grace of the god Asklepios.
Ardent sightseers (or those looking to kill time waiting for the bus) can stroll the ruins of the main part of the sanctuary, which once held Epidavros’ mineral baths, health clubs, hostels, and temples.
Modern doctors still invoke Asklepios in the opening line of the Hippocratic oath: “I swear by Apollo, Asclepius, etc...” (Although Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, worked in an asclepion, it was at the temple at Kos, not Epidavros.)
• One final part of the Epidavros site is worth knowing about.
Epidavros’ 6,000-seat stadium was used for the Festival of Asklepios every four years (like other ancient Greek athletic competitions). To ensure a good crowd, the festival was staged nine days after the Isthmian Games, at Isthmia near Corinth, which was one of the big events of the Panhellenic sporting calendar, along with the Olympic Games and the Pythian Games at Delphi.
