Greece's first capital — Venetian lanes, Palamidi fortress, and Peloponnese food
Nafplio is the most beautiful small city in mainland Greece — a compact peninsula of Venetian mansions, neoclassical facades, and bougainvillea-draped lanes that tumble down to a harbour guarded by a Venetian sea fortress. It was the capital of the Greek state from 1828 to 1834, and its position between the Argolid plain, the ancient sites of Mycenae and Epidaurus, and the sea makes it the best base in the Peloponnese. The food is rooted in olive oil, sea urchin, and village cheeses.
Nafplio's strategic harbour made it endlessly contested — it was Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian twice (1388–1540 and 1686–1715), Ottoman, and finally the capital of the modern Greek state after independence in 1828. Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first governor of Greece, was assassinated in the church of Agios Spyridon here in 1831, a political murder that sparked a decade of instability. The Venetian lion of St. Mark is carved into gates across the old town.