Corinth was destroyed by Rome in 146 BCE, refounded by Caesar, walled off by Justinian and levelled by earthquakes in 1858 and 1928. Three days here follow that layering — Frankish gates, Byzantine basilicas, Ottoman wells and a 19th-century canal.
Three successive gate lines — Frankish outer, Byzantine middle, Ottoman-repaired inner — guard 24 hectares of citadel at 575m. Inside stand a Turkish mosque shell, Venetian bastions and the vaulted Upper Peirene spring.
Terraced dining rooms cut into the hillside where initiates ate ritual meals from the 7th century BCE into Roman times; excavators recovered over 24,000 votive offerings, many of them curse tablets, from these terraces.
At roughly 180m long this was the largest early Christian basilica in Greece, built about 450–520 CE beside Corinth's western port. Marble floor slabs, the circular baptistery and the silted harbour moles survive in the marsh.
The Hexamilion ran 7.5km across the isthmus to seal the Peloponnese from northern invaders from about 412 CE. Its fortress kept fifteen towers and reused blocks quarried straight out of the Sanctuary of Poseidon next door.
Three floors of Peloponnesian costume, silverwork and gold embroidery on the Korinthos quay, documenting dress from Corinthia, Argolida and the Arvanite villages of the isthmus, plus tools from the currant-trade years.
Raised in the 1930s after the 1928 earthquake flattened the new coastal town. Interior mosaics show Paul before Gallio at the Bema, and the forecourt became the fixed centre point of the rebuilt street grid.
The 1988 sinking bridge drops eight metres underwater so ships can pass overhead. The banks beside it still show where retreating German engineers blew the canal walls in 1944, dumping locomotives and rolling stock into the cut.
Korinthos was moved to the coast after the 1858 quake, then rebuilt again after 1928 on a low wide grid — nothing tall, streets aligned to the gulf breeze as an anti-seismic measure. The marble war memorial stands on the north side.
The Temple of Zeus of 330 BCE keeps three original columns, with six more re-erected since 2002. The museum holds the games material, and the stadium is entered through a vaulted athletes' tunnel with ancient graffiti cut into it.
The village grew directly over the ruins after 1858, when families with means moved to the new coastal town and the poorest stayed on the old site. Ottoman-era wells, a 1930s schoolhouse and family tavernas ring the excavation fence.
Corinth's Saronic port, where Paul sailed for Ephesus after cutting his hair for a vow. Earthquakes in 365 and 551 CE dropped the moles, warehouses and an undelivered crate of glass opus sectile panels a metre below the waterline.
A sanctuary of Hera on a rock cove at the tip of the Perachora peninsula: 8th-century BCE temple foundations, an L-shaped dining stoa, a sacred pool and a rock-cut cistern, with the 1897 lighthouse standing on the headland above.