Arta

The thing that stays with you in Arta is that you are standing on a classical city without noticing it. Ambracia was the capital of Epirus when Pyrrhus was the most dangerous man in the Mediterranean, and it occupies roughly half the area of the modern town — but it is not fenced off on a hill. The western necropolis is a field beside a road. The small theatre is a couple of streets back from the main square, down a slope, and you find it because the little theatre of Ambracia is the smallest surviving theatre in the country, with an orchestra about 6.7 metres across and no row of honour seats at all. Something that size should not feel important. It does.

The town has a second face, which is the Arachthos. The stone bridge across it is the image on every postcard, and the walk across it is the best free thing to do in Arta, because the arches are unequal on purpose and the river changes character completely underneath depending on the season.

And Arta is a working city, not a museum. It has a Saturday market, a real evening life around the square, and a genuine regional cuisine that leans on the produce of the plain it sits in.

Ambracia was founded in the fourth century BC by Gorgus, a Corinthian, on the orders of the Delphic Apollo, and it grew into the capital of the Epirote kingdom. Pyrrhus ruled from it in the early third century BC; the Roman army sacked the city in 189 BC after Pyrrhus' death, and shortly after that the theatre now standing on the site was built, late fourth or early third century, on a filled slope over a bath complex of roughly the same date.

Roman Ambracia was a substantial city, and its name survives everywhere — in the Gulf of Ambracia, in the shrimp that are endemic to it, in the region of Amvrakia. After the Roman period the site was abandoned as a city, and the medieval and modern settlement of Arta grew up beside the Arachthos a little to the east.

The bridge that defines the modern town is Ottoman, not Roman and not recent: the surviving structure dates from 1602 to 1606 and was paid for by a local grocer. At its east end is the square where Ali Pasha of Ioannina is said to have hanged fighters captured in the 1821 war, an episode remembered in a folk song. The town changed hands during the First Balkan War and joined Greece in 1913; refugees of the 1923 population exchange more than doubled the population within a decade.

Arta the town is genuinely inland — the open sea is around ninety kilometres away — and the good news is that you do not need it, because there is more within a short drive than almost anywhere else in Epirus.

Immediately around the town: the wooded Perinthi hill, which is the city's backdrop and connects the wetlands below to the Tzoumerka mountains beyond. Kostaki, a village of about two thousand people immediately adjoining the western edge of town, where the National Stadium and an excavated stretch of the ancient sacred road stand. The Parapotamio park, with its artificial lake beside the Arachthos, created when the Pournarios dam was built in 1975 — the town's own waterfront and the easiest short walk. And a few kilometres south, the monastery of Kato Panagia on the river bank, founded in the mid-thirteenth century and still frescoed.

The one genuinely surprising thing about the area is that Arta's municipality reaches the sea. The coastal arm of it, the Amvrakikos municipal unit, runs down to the Ambracian Gulf, and Koronisia, the municipality's own seaside village, is only about seventeen kilometres from the town centre as the crow flies — an easy and rarely made day trip. Around it is lagoon and birdwatching country at the mouth of the Kalamas.

Be careful with one thing that search results get wrong constantly: Perdika and Sivota are frequently presented as near Arta, and they are not — they are on the Ionian coast about sixty kilometres away and belong to Thesprotia. Parga is fifty kilometres. Amfilochia, on the Gulf, is thirty-seven.

Epirus eats like Epirus, and the food is characteristically good. The staple is a slow-cooked lamb in pastry, the tradition of the region's shepherds, and it is the thing to order first. The local Kefalograviera Arta is a hard sheep's cheese under protected designation and is genuinely distinctive. The Artinoi plain immediately south of town gives the citrus, and the whole region produces beans, corn, walnuts and honey.

If you are in town at the right time, the Saturday market is where the plain arrives. Eat the pies and the grilled meats rather than chasing novelty; this is not a city with a dining scene so much as a city with very good regional cooking, which is better.

April to June is the best time for Arta: the plain is green, the Perinthi hill is covered, and the weather is warm without being oppressive. September and October are excellent, and October in particular is harvest time in the Artinoi plain. July and August are hot, and the town is at its quietest in August once the festivals are over. Winter is cool and wet, with snow occasionally on the Peranthi, but it is the best time for the town's cafés and for very low prices.

Arta has no railway station, so the realistic route is by road: about 100 km from Ioannina and the same from Preveza, with buses serving both.

A car is worth renting, mostly for the museum, the theatre and the coastal drive down to Koronisia. Arta's castle is open and worth the climb; the small theatre is small enough that you can see the whole orchestra from the top row. Take shoes you do not mind marking for the theatre and the necropolis. Eat the lamb in pastry on the day you arrive, because it sets the standard for the rest of the trip.