From Athens Pausanias followed the sacred way to the sanctuary of Demeter in Eleusis and then the coastal road towards the Peloponnese, the largest peninsula in Greece linked to the mainland by a narrow neck of land, the Isthmus of Corinth, only 5 kms wide. Pausanias crossed the isthmus and as he had deep admiration of old Greece he visited one of the most important ancient centres of worship, the sanctuary of Poseidon of Isthmia, where panhellenic games were held every two years.

Then he went to Corinth through the gate of Cenchreae, which was the port of Corinth in the Aegean sea. There outside the gate he saw the grave of Diogenes the cynic philosopher who lived in Corinth.

Nowadays you take the modern equivalent of the ancient road from Athens to the Peloponnese and when you arrive at the isthmus you cross over through the bridge that now links the Peloponnese with the rest of Greece after a canal that was planned from ancient times was cut through the isthmus in the 19th century.

As soon as you are on the Peloponnese there are plenty of sites to explore. You can spend days visiting all the places mentioned by Pausanias in his second book about Corinth but let us give you the highlights.

You must visit Ancient Corinth, a prosperous city of ancient times with a high artistic level which was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC and rebuilt by them as a Roman colony a hundred years later.