Tripoli

Tripoli is a town built out of war, and its architecture says so.

It was called Tripolitsa until the late nineteenth century, and it was destroyed three times between 1770 and 1828: by the Orlov revolt, by the Greeks in 1821, and by Ibrahim Pasha in 1828, when it burned for nine days. Out of that came the long arcaded squares and the stone civic buildings of today — Areos Square, which the national tourism organisation calls one of the largest and most beautiful in Greece, and Revolution Square with its monument to the fighters.

The man the town is most identified with is Theodoros Kolokotronis, known as the Old Man of the Morias, and the square where the revolutionaries first raised the flag is the one to stand in. The Archaeological Museum has been in the town since 1884 and runs from the Neolithic to Late Antiquity.

Tripoli also does something to you that most Greek plateau towns do not: it is the seat of the entire Peloponnese region, not merely of Arcadia. Patras is the capital of Western Greece, a different region entirely, and the confusion between the two is the single most common error in English guidebooks about the Peloponnese.

From the seat of Kolokotronis the view runs out over the snow-covered basin, which is the image most people leave with.

There is no ancient Tripoli. The modern town was founded in the early fourteenth century and took its present shape under the Ottomans, and it is worth being plain about that, because the name invites the opposite assumption: the classical name Tripolis means 'three cities' and belongs to a Phoenician foundation story that has nothing to do with this place.

What there is instead is a strategic plateau town. Arcadia is a highland of old limestone and shallow soil, difficult to farm and correspondingly hard to conquer, and Tripoli sits at the centre of it with the routes to the Peloponnese's three coasts — Argolic to the east, Laconian to the south, Ionian to the west — passing through or near it.

Under the Ottomans it was the administrative centre of the Morea and the seat of the local pasha. It burned in 1770 during the Orlov revolt, and again in 1821. When the Greeks took it in September 1821 it became the seat of the revolutionary government, and the First National Assembly of the Peloponnese met there before the independent state settled on Nauplia. Ibrahim Pasha retook it in 1822 and Kolokotronis was drawn out of the citadel in his nightshirt, but the town fell for good in 1828.

It has been the seat of the Peloponnese Region since the Kallikratis reform took effect in 2011. The revolution gave Greece its first flag, its first anthem and its first bank, and all three came out of this plateau.

Tripoli is deep in the Arcadian plateau, about 650 metres up, and the sea is far away — the nearest coast is well over sixty kilometres. What there is instead is mountain, and there is a great deal of it.

North is Mount Menalio, the range immediately behind the town, with marked paths in summer and Nestor's Cave on its lower slopes. Levidi, at 920 metres, is the wine town on the far side of the hill, and a levidi is both its local red and the oak barrel it is traditionally aged in.

East, at about eleven kilometres, is Tegea, one of the best-preserved ancient Arcadian cities, with the Temple of Athena Alea — a temple of the late sixth century BC that is genuinely worth the walk. It also has a festival, the Epidaurus Tegeas, staged in the town itself.

Up onto Mainalo, the road runs through Stadia to Stemnitsa and Dimitsana, and to the villages beyond: Valsetsi and Skiritida to the west, with the Monastery of Upper Chrepa on a mountainside near Tripoli itself. The whole region is stone villages, oak and chestnut, and the sort of country that is at its best on a spring day with the snow still on Menalio.

Arcadia is inland food, and it is honest, characterful cooking rather than fine dining.

The two things to look for are the local cheeses — Arcadia produces some of the best hard and semi-hard cheeses in Greece — and the smoked meats, which are the tradition of the mountain villages rather than of the town. Grilled lamb over charcoal, pies, and the stuffed vegetables that the Peloponnese does well.

Levidi, up the hill, is the wine country. The local red is worth drinking with the lamb, and the barrel is the local oak. The cured meats from the Mani villages further south, if you are driving that way, are the other thing worth coming back with.

April to June is the best time: the plateau is green, Menalio is full, and the wildflowers in the polje fields around the town are at their best in May. September and October are excellent, with the vines and chestnuts in and the first snow on Menalio. December to March is cold and snowy — it is a plateau town at 650 metres — and the town has a real winter. January and February are the quietest months and the most atmospheric, and the Carnival season runs through that period.

Tripoli sits on the main road and rail corridor between Athens and Kalamata, with regular buses and trains. That makes it the regional hub, and the easiest place in the Arcadian plateau to reach without a car.

A car is worth having for Menalio, Tegea and the mountain villages, none of which are well served otherwise. Go up to Kolokotronis' seat late in the day: the light on the basin is the reason to make the climb, and it is much better when the sun is low. If you are heading south to Sparta or Kalamata, allow for the mountain roads, which are slower than the map suggests. And do expect snow in winter — the town is high enough for it to be routine, not exceptional.