|
Argos City
Archaeological Museum of Argos: Bronze helmet and Cuirass |
Welcome to Argos!
Argos is situated in the plain of Argolis, 135 km (84.5 miles) from Athens and 12 km (7.5 miles) from Nafplio, the Argolis (or Argolida) Prefecture capital. It has some 28000 inhabitants. A modern town, yet having kept intact several architectural monuments of its past, it manages to differentiate itself from a lot of other modern towns.
Next to the modern shops there is the Municipal Marketplace, housed in a neo-classical nice building. Next to the fruit and vegetable boutiques, there is the open-air Saturday Vegetable Market, where everything can be found at low prices and where thousands of people are attracted, not only coming from the city itself but from all the villages around Argos as well!
Other buildings connecting Argos to its past are the Kapodistrias Barracks, built around 1830, the “Kallerghion Megaron”, housing the Argos Archaeological Museum, the “Konstantopoulos Megaron”, designed by E. Tsiller in 1912 and being renovated to house the Municipal Cultural Center, the Tsokris Mansion and several others, privately owned, but officially declared landmarks of the city. There is also a number of Byzantine churches worth visiting.
Despite all the historical monuments from the millennia old history of the city, the local economy is not primarily based on tourism but on agriculture. The youth of the city have at their disposal educational institutions of Primary and Intermediate levels and a series of athletic clubs specializing in several fields.
There are also Banks, a Police Station, a Railway Station, a Post Office and anything a modern town needs Argos, which was already a "polis" of Dorians in the 8th-7th centuries B.C., once had belonged to Mycenae. The capacity of the ancient theater was about 20,000 people (10,000 people now). The theater had 90 rows of seats (83 rows now), while Delphi's has 35 rows, and the Epidavros one has 55 rows. The sound control is excellent. Large works produced in the city's famous sculpture studios decorated temples and sanctuaries. The visitor will find some of them, weathered by time, in the ancient agora (on the road to Tripolis).
Argos Ancient Theater |
|
|
|
|
|
