Before Athens was the capital of modern Greece, Nafplio was. This small seaside town on the Argolic Gulf, wrapped around a rocky headland and watched over by a Venetian fortress, is where the young Greek state first tried to govern itself after the War of Independence, and where its first head of state was shot dead on his way to church. This walk starts at the Lion of Bavaria on the eastern edge of town, threads through the marble-paved lanes of the old town past the churches and the square where that history happened, and ends at the tip of the harbor facing the little island castle of the Bourtzi. It is about two and a half kilometers and almost entirely flat, an easy morning or a slow golden evening, and one of the prettiest self-guided walking tours in Greece.

Before you set off

Give yourself about an hour and a half at a stroll, longer if you step inside the churches or the archaeological museum. The route is flat, but the old town is paved in smooth, polished stone that gets slippery when wet, so wear shoes with some grip. The lanes are narrow and fairly shady, while the harbor front at the end is open to the sun, so in summer start early or come for the evening stroll, when the whole town walks the waterfront and the sun sets behind the Bourtzi. Churches are working places of worship: cover your shoulders, keep your voice down, and step out if a service is under way. The museum and churches keep their own hours, which change through the year, so check before you go. The great fortress of Palamidi on the hill above town is not part of this walk. It deserves its own morning, and its long stairway is best climbed early, before the heat. Carry water and leave time for a coffee on Syntagma Square.

Lion of Bavaria

In a small park on the edge of the Pronia quarter, look at the rock face in front of you. Carved straight into the living stone is a great lion, lying stretched out and still, a memorial far from home. It honors Bavarian soldiers who died in Greece in the 1830s, and most of them were killed not by battle but by disease, an epidemic that swept through their ranks. They were here because of a king. After the War of Independence and the chaos that followed the murder of the country's first governor, the great powers of Europe, Britain, France and Russia, chose a ruler for Greece. Their choice was Otto, the seventeen-year-old second son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. He landed at Nafplio in early 1833 with a council of Bavarian regents to govern in his name and an army of Bavarian troops to keep order. The young king learned Greek, wore Greek dress and tried hard, but his Bavarian advisers ran the country as foreigners, and the resentment that built up would eventually cost him his throne. The lion is the gentlest reminder of those years, and it is easy to miss: most visitors to Nafplio never come this far east. Take a minute in the quiet before the old town. When you are ready, head west along the main road toward the center, with the fortress of Palamidi rising on your left. The park with the statue is about ten minutes away.

Kolokotronis Park

Acronauplia and Nafplio from above In front of you, a bronze rider sits high on his horse. This is Theodoros Kolokotronis, the most famous commander of the Greek War of Independence, known to Greeks as the Old Man of the Morea. Before the revolution he had been a klepht, one of the armed mountain men who lived outside Ottoman law, and he had served in a Greek regiment of the British army in the Ionian Islands. When the uprising broke out in 1821 he led the siege of Tripolitsa, the Ottoman capital of the Peloponnese, and in the summer of 1822 he destroyed a large Ottoman army in the pass of Dervenakia, not far from here. Now look up at the fortress on the hill behind him. That is Palamidi, built by the Venetians in the early 1700s, and Greek fighters took it in a night assault in late 1822, which opened the way for the town itself to surrender. Kolokotronis knew the inside of Palamidi in a different way. After independence he quarreled with the Bavarian regency, was tried for treason, and was sentenced to death in 1834. The sentence was not carried out; he was held in the fortress and later pardoned. Locals will tell you that the stairway up to Palamidi has 999 steps. Most people who count find fewer. From the park, walk west into the old town for about three minutes, then turn left to reach the square with the cathedral, about four minutes in all.

Agios Georgios Cathedral

You are now in the old town proper, among the narrow lanes the Venetians laid out, and this quiet square belongs to the cathedral of Saint George. The building has changed faith with the town. It dates from the Venetian centuries, served as a mosque during Ottoman rule, and returned to Christian worship after the Greeks took the town, becoming its cathedral. Nafplio itself changed hands many times. The Venetians held it from the late fourteenth century until 1540, when the Ottomans took it; Venice won it back in 1686 and built Palamidi to keep it, only to lose it again to a fast Ottoman siege in 1715. Ottoman Nafplio then lasted until the Greek capture of 1822. All of that is folded into these few streets, in the stone of the houses, the fountains, and the occasional Venetian lion or Ottoman inscription you will spot if you look up. Inside the cathedral, if the door is open, the walls are covered in paintings, among them a version of Leonardo's Last Supper, and there is a carved royal throne made for King Otto, who worshipped here while Nafplio was his capital. Step in quietly, let your eyes adjust to the dark, and look for the throne. When you come out, the next church is less than two minutes to the west, along the lane leading out of the square to a small paved square of its own.