Ancient Corinth and Olive Oil Tour

The mythical founder of the city was King Sissphus famed for his punishment in Hades, where he was made to forever roll a large boulder up a hill. Sissyphus was succeeded by his son Glaukus and his grandson Bellerephon, whose winged horse Pegasus became a symbol of the city and a feature of Corinthian coins.

The ruins of ancient Corinth sit at the base of Acrocorinth, a massive rock formation that rises 300 feet above sea level. It was fist inhabited in the Neolithic period sometime between 5000 and 3000 B.C.

Corinth grew into a great commercial power in the 8th century B.C due to its geographical position near the Isthmus. Using the ship road known as Diolkos and the city’s two ports, it could control trade both on land and the sea. Corinthians were sailing to the Ionian and the Adriatic Seas, they founded colonies, such as Corfu and Syracuse, and thus dominated the market places of the Mediterranean.

An additional attraction of the city was the celebration of the Isthmian Games, a Panhellenic religious festival of athletic and musical competitions in honor of Poseidon, held every two years at his sanctuary at Isthmia.

In Roman times, the Roman consul Lucius Mummius destroyed the city in 146 B.C. It was one century later when the city was re-planned as a Roman colony by Julius Ceasar.During this flourish of Corinth, new temples, streets framed by porticos and shops, fountains, private benefactions, and so on, were built to fulfill the needs of a multi-ethnic society constituted by Greeks, Romans and Jews.

This cosmopolitan city was the one that Paul the Apostle visited around 50-52 A.D. It was an ideal place to establish a Christian Community, for its numerous connections would assure the rapid propagation of the new religion.

The city enjoyed some prosperity under Byzantine rule but declined in the later European Middle Ages. After the Turkish conquest in 1458, it was reduced to a country town.