🇬🇷 Greece · Mainland Greece
Some towns seem designed to make a traveller fall in love, and Nafplio is one of them. Looking out over the Argolic Gulf, in the northeast of the Peloponnese, this small gem combines cobbled lanes, neoclassical houses with wrought iron balconies, bougainvillea spilling over the walls, marble squares and, crowning it all, three fortresses that tell the story of Venetians and Ottomans. It is no accident that many Greeks consider it the prettiest town in all of mainland Greece.
But Nafplio is not just a postcard: it is also a place with enormous historical weight. It was the first capital of the modern Greek state after the War of Independence, and its streets still carry that air of a capital in miniature, with its public buildings, its first parliament set up in a former mosque and the memory of governor Ioannis Kapodistrias, assassinated at one of its churches. Climbing the hundreds of steps of the Palamidi fortress to look out over the town and the sea from the top is one of those moments you do not forget.
This guide covers Nafplio with a practical, warm eye: how to organise your visit to its three fortresses, where to see the best sunset, how to use the town as a base for the great archaeological treasures of Argolis — Mycenae and Epidaurus — and where to enjoy the good food of the Peloponnese. Nafplio rewards the traveller who lets themselves get lost in its lanes and sits unhurried in a square watching the afternoon go by.
The name Nafplio is linked in mythology to Nauplius, son of Poseidon, the legendary founder of the town. The place was inhabited from remote times, in a region dominated by nearby Argos and by the great Mycenaean centres of Mycenae and Tiryns. But it owes its present appearance above all to the Middle Ages and to Venetian rule. From the 13th century, after the Fourth Crusade, the area passed through Frankish and then Venetian hands; the Venetians made Nafplio (which they called Napoli di Romania) a key stronghold, fortifying it with the defences of Acronauplia and, above all, raising the imposing Palamidi fortress at the start of the 18th century. The town changed hands between Venetians and Ottomans several times. Its finest hour came with the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830): Nafplio was one of the bastions of the revolution and, after its liberation, became the first capital of the emerging Greek state. There governed Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of modern Greece, assassinated in Nafplio in 1831 at the doors of the church of Saint Spyridon. In 1833 the young king Otto of Bavaria, the first Greek monarch, landed in the town. The following year, in 1834, the capital moved to Athens, and Nafplio remained an elegant provincial town that kept its historic centre intact. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The land heart of Greece: the oracle of Delphi and the Olympia of the Games, the suspended monasteries of Meteora, Venetian Nafplio that was the first capital of the modern state, and the Macedonia of Alexander with Thessaloniki, the great Sephardic metropolis wiped out in 1943.
Read the history of Mainland Greece →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Greek mythology credits the founding of Nafplio to Nauplius (Nauplios), a hero, son of the sea god Poseidon and the nymph Amymone. From him the town is said to take its name — Nauplia — and his descendants, the Nauplidae, were famous seafarers. The best known of the line was a later Nauplius, linked to the Trojan War cycle, who according to legend caused shipwrecks by lighting deceiving fires along the coast to avenge the death of his son Palamedes, who gave his name to the Palamidi fortress.
Beyond the myth, the Argolic Gulf region was one of the hearts of Mycenaean civilisation in the Bronze Age. A few kilometres away stood the great centres of power at Mycenae and Tiryns, with their palaces and Cyclopean walls. In that context, the Nafplio area worked as that world's outlet to the sea, a sheltered natural harbour in a strategic gulf. Continuous human occupation in this corner of Argolis therefore goes back thousands of years.
In classical antiquity, however, Nauplia was overshadowed by its powerful neighbour Argos, the great city of the region, which ended up controlling it and using it as its port. Unlike other places in Greece, Nafplio had no first-rank role in the classical period: its great moment would come much later, in the Middle Ages and at the dawn of modern Greece. So although its name reaches down into mythology, what visitors admire today belongs above all to Venetians, Ottomans and the founders of Greek independence.
After antiquity, Nafplio became part of the Byzantine Empire, which ruled the region for centuries and began fortifying the hill of Acronauplia, the rocky outcrop looking over the present town. That height, easy to defend and with views over the gulf, was the original core of medieval Nafplio: a small walled town on high ground, typical of the insecure Middle Ages, when populations fell back on defensible positions against pirates and invaders.
The great turn came with the Fourth Crusade (1204), which broke up the Byzantine Empire and shared out its territories among Latin (Frankish) and Venetian lords. Argolis fell into the crusaders' orbit, and Nafplio passed to Frankish lords of the Principality of Achaea, the crusader state that controlled much of the Peloponnese (then called the Morea). During this period the defences of Acronauplia were reinforced, coming to have distinct walled enclosures corresponding to the successive powers that held it.
At the end of the 14th century the town passed to the Republic of Venice, which folded it into its network of strongholds and ports in the eastern Mediterranean. So began the stage that would most deeply shape the look of Nafplio. For the Venetians, the town — which they called Napoli di Romania — was an extremely valuable position: a safe, well-defended harbour in a fertile region, a key piece of their maritime empire against the growing Ottoman power spreading across the Balkans and the Aegean.
Over the following centuries, Nafplio was one of the most fought-over positions in the eastern Mediterranean, changing hands between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire in a back-and-forth that left its mark on every stone of the town. The Venetians fortified it thoroughly: as well as reinforcing Acronauplia, in the 15th century they raised the Bourtzi fortress on an islet at the harbour entrance, from which they could close access with a chain to stop enemy ships getting through.
In 1540, after a long war, Venice ceded Nafplio to the Ottomans, who governed it for more than a century and a half. Under Turkish rule the town grew beyond the hill, towards the flat area where the historic centre stands today, and mosques, baths and other buildings were put up, of which traces remain, converted into churches or museums. At the end of the 17th century, in the wars between Venice and the Ottomans, the Venetians reconquered much of the Peloponnese and, with it, Nafplio (1686).
It was during this second Venetian period that the work that dominates the town today was built: the imposing Palamidi fortress, raised between 1711 and 1714 on top of the hill, a sophisticated set of bastions that is one of the peaks of Venetian military engineering. The investment, however, availed them little: barely a year after it was finished, in 1715, the Ottomans retook Nafplio almost without a fight. The town thus returned to Turkish hands, where it would remain until the great Greek uprising of the 19th century.
The fate of Nafplio was bound forever to the birth of modern Greece. When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, the town, solidly fortified and in Ottoman hands, became a military objective of the first order for the revolutionaries. After a long siege, the Greek forces — with figures such as Theodoros Kolokotronis, legendary hero of the revolution — took Nafplio at the end of 1822, in one of the most important and symbolic victories of the war.
Thanks to its defences and its harbour, Nafplio became the political centre of the revolution and, once independence was consolidated, the first capital of the new Greek state. There the institutions of the emerging country were installed: the first Parliament (the Vouleftiko) operated in a converted former mosque. In 1828 Ioannis Kapodistrias arrived in the town, appointed the first governor (head of state) of Greece, a diplomat of great standing who tried to organise a modern state from Nafplio.
But the glorious moment was tinged with tragedy. On 9 October 1831 Kapodistrias was assassinated in Nafplio, at the doors of the church of Saint Spyridon, the victim of a rival clan's revenge; the bullet mark is still shown on the church wall today. After a period of instability, the European powers imposed a monarchy: in 1833 the young Otto of Bavaria, the first king of Greece, landed at Nafplio. The town thus lived its highest moment as capital of the kingdom. Barely a year later, in 1834, the capital moved to Athens, for its greater symbolism and central position, and Nafplio began a quieter phase as an elegant provincial town.
The historical importance of Nafplio cannot be understood without its surroundings, Argolis, one of the regions most loaded with the past in all of Greece. A few kilometres away are Mycenae and Tiryns, the great citadels of Mycenaean civilisation, which flourished in the late Bronze Age (roughly between the 16th and 12th centuries BC) and gave its name to a whole era of Greek prehistory. Both were jointly declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Mycenae was, according to Homeric tradition, the seat of King Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War. Its Cyclopean walls, its Lion Gate — with the oldest monumental relief in Europe — and the gold treasures found in its tombs by the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century revealed to the modern world a forgotten civilisation known only from myth. Tiryns, its neighbour, astonishes with the scale of its walls, which later Greeks believed to be the work of the Cyclopes.
Not far away is Epidaurus, seat of the most famous healing sanctuary in the Greek world, dedicated to Asklepios, god of medicine, also a World Heritage Site. Its theatre, from the 4th century BC, is the best preserved from antiquity and famous for its perfect acoustics. This concentration of extraordinary sites makes Nafplio a privileged base for diving into the very origins of Greek culture: from the heroic kingdoms of the Bronze Age to the classical golden age, everything is within a day's reach of the town.