Lavreotiki (Region/Region Of Lavreotiki)

Lavreotiki is the south-eastern tip of the Attica peninsula, a dry, hilly stretch of coast between the Saronic Gulf and the Aegean. Its main town is Lavrion, a port with an industrial past, and its fame rests on silver. From the Bronze Age through classical times, the hills here were riddled with shafts and galleries cut to reach veins of silver-bearing lead, and the metal they produced made Athens rich. The great mining boom of the fifth century BCE paid for the fleet that defeated the Persians at Salamis in 480 BCE, after Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to invest the new silver in warships.

Thorikos, on the coast north of Lavrion, is the best place to see the ancient landscape. It has a very early theatre with an unusual elliptical auditorium, the remains of a mining settlement, and a Bronze Age tholos tomb. Nearby, washing floors where ore was crushed and sluiced to separate the silver, cisterns and shafts show how the mining operated. Slaves worked in harsh conditions in the mines, a part of the story that is not forgotten. In the town, the Mineralogical Museum of Lavrion displays minerals from the area, which are among the most varied in Greece, and an industrial heritage park preserves the buildings of the nineteenth-century French mining company that reworked the ancient slag heaps.

The Greek coast here has a quiet character. Small harbours, fishing boats and low hills with pine and scrub give the area a different feel from the busy Athenian Riviera to the north. Offshore, the island of Makronisos, once used as a prison island, stretches along the coast, and ferries from Lavrion run to Kea and Kythnos. The region stretches south to Cape Sounion, where the Temple of Poseidon stands on its headland, so the whole peninsula can be explored as a day trip from Athens.

Most visits combine two or three places in a day. A morning at Thorikos and the museum, lunch at a fish taverna in the harbour, and an afternoon at Sounion for the sunset is a popular route. The roads are good, and driving from central Athens takes about an hour. Wear sturdy shoes at the archaeological sites, since the ground is rocky and there is little shade, and bring water in summer.