6 Best Sights in The Peloponnese, Greece

While following the seaside promenade, before you reach the very tip of the peninsula (marked by a ship's beacon), there is a little shrine at the foot of a path leading up toward the Acronafplia walls above. The tiny church of the Virgin Mary, or Agia Panagitsa, hugs the cliff on a small terrace and is decorated with icons. During the Turkish occupation the church hid one of Greece's secret schools.

The oldest church in Kalamata is the small 13th-century Agioi Apostoli ("Holy Apostles"), dedicated to the Virgin of Kalamata ("of the good eye"), from whom the town may get its name. The Greek War of Independence was formally declared here on March 23, 1821, and a celebration is held at the church on that date every year. Even the square on which it lies, Martiou 23 (March 23rd), is named after this historic moment.

In the 19th century King Otho returned this 13th-century landmark, restored and converted into a mosque under the Turks, to Nafplion's Catholics. The church is best known for the wooden arch erected inside the doorway, with the names carved on it of philhellenes (Greek admirers) who died during the War of Independence (Lord Byron is number 10). A mihrab (Muslim prayer recess) behind the altar and the amputated stub of a minaret are evidence of the church's use as a mosque. The church has a small museum and an underground crypt in which can be found sculptural work commemorating the defeat of the Turks at the hands of the Greeks and philhellenes.

This post-Byzantine three-aisle basilica is by tradition linked to St. Anastasios, a Nafpliote painter. Anastasios was supposedly engaged to a local girl, but he abandoned her because she was immoral. Becoming despondent as a result of spells cast over him by her relatives, he converted to Islam. When the spell wore off, he cried out, "I was a Christian, I am a Christian, and I shall die a Christian." An Ottoman judge ordered that he be beheaded, but a Turkish mob stabbed Anastasios to death. His corpse was then allegedly hanged on an ancient olive tree that rises next to the church and that never again bore fruit. The basilica was the main Orthodox church during the Venetian occupation and has an elaborate wooden reredos carved in 1870.

This is one of the largest churches in Greece, and dates from the early 20th century. It is built next to a spring that's been used for thousands of years, and during antiquity its waters were thought to have prophetic powers. St. Andrews is an important pilgrimage sight—the cavernous interior houses the head of the namesake saint, who spread Christianity throughout Greece and was crucified in Patras in AD 60.

This one-aisle basilica with a dome (1702) has a special place in Greek history: it was in its doorway that the statesman Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of the newly independent Greek state, was assassinated in 1831 by the Mavromichalis brothers from the Mani, the outcome of a long-running vendetta. The mark of the bullet can be seen next to the Venetian portal. On the south side of the square, opposite St. Spyridon, are two of the four Turkish fountains that remain in Nafplion. A third is a short distance east on Kapodistria Street, at the steps that constitute the upper reaches of Tertsetou Street.