Travelling without car can be a bit challenging in Greece. Each district has their own local KTEL (bus company). The only priority for each KTEL seems to be to offer frequent connections to Athens. E.g. there are two daily busses to Athens from a village like Andritsaina, but there are only two weekly connections from e.g. Sparti across the mountain range to neighboring Kalatama.

This was the conundrum I faced when planning my visit to Ancient Messene. Generally, I had time for a visit, but I could not work out a leisurely connection. Being in Mystras/Sparti I would have to backtrack to Tripoli. There I would hope (or wait) to catch the bus from Athens on its pee break at the Tripoli bus station. For a trip that would have taken 1h by car, I had to plan 3h by bus. Minimum.

My inclination was to simply skip the site and opt for the easier option of continuing straight via Tripoli to Pyrgos for Olympia. That is, had it not been for the glowing review by Thibault (thanks!). His review peaked my interest, so much so that I didn't want to forego the site. Eventually, I settled on the stressful option of going for the connecting bus to Kalamata and then catching a cab in Kalamata to the site.

It started off rather badly, as the bus from Sparti was really slow. The trip to Tripoli should have taken less than an hour, it took 80min. I was afraid of missing my connection, but luckily, the other bus was late, too, so I managed just fine. In Kalamata, the hotel quickly arranged a surprisingly reasonably priced cab and off I went.

When you enter, you first see a restored amphitheatre that is too modern to impress. I was worried what I got myself into. But wandering around on the premises, the site grew on me. Unlike most other Greek archeological sites the site felt well documented and accessible. It really opens up and gives you an idea of the city.

And then there was the wow moment... It was when I reached the stadium. For all the Roman/Greek sites I have visited as part of my travels, I have not seen anything like it. It's just great and it felt like being sent back in time.

Unfortunately, I did not manage the fortifications. Those seem further out and I had not planned for it.

In sum, I was really happy of having made the trip. Interestingly, Messine is not a well funded excavation. So it's quite likely that they will unearth even more treasures in the future.

OUV

One may question the point of inscribing yet another classical ruin, but... Messene is a fine one at that and distinct from the other archeological sites I have seen in Greece so far. The site is well presented and has a different flair to Olympia (sports!) and Delphi (oracle!). You get a good feeling for the town itself and the highlight is without doubt the stadium (wow).

Getting There

Hate to repeat myself, but... If you see an "archaia/ancient" in front of any city name in Greece, it points to there also being a "nea/new" city that may be quite far apart. In the case of Messene, it's 30km or so between old and new town, so there really is no point in travelling to New Messene. You may as well go to Kalamata, the principal city of the area.

Kalamata has frequent connections to Athens via Corinth/Isthmus and Tripoli as well as 1-2 connections a day to Pyrgos (Olympia) and Patras. Meanwhile, getting to either Megalopolis (Amphitheatre (T), Bassae) or Sparti (Mystras), the neighboring cities in the neighboring districts seems nearly impossible. I connected from Sparti to Tripoli and got lucky to catch my connection to Kalamata. In addition, Kalamata has a tourist airport with (in pre Corona times) connections all over Europe.

In Kalamata I ordered a cab via my hotel. Cost was below 60€ which seemed fair for the travel distance and travel time (45min each way).

While You Are There

I didn't much enjoy Kalamata, so not much to say.