UR TV CAST

There was no sound of cars, no tour groups, nothing of the 21st century. The chanting, still sung in the language of Byzantine Empire, seemed like a lifeline of tones and syllables linking us with the 14th-century glory days of Mistra.All around, clinging to the steep green slopes of the ruined city, lay a litter of great palaces and monasteries, libraries, refectories and scriptoria, drinking fountains and aqueducts, fortress walls and frescoed churches, all now completely deserted. Between the ruins grew cypresses and oleanders, hibiscus, myrtle and wild roses. The water – as still and as silver in the evening light as a pool of mercury – looked inviting. We headed back down the path and made straight for the jetty below the sea walls, ready to dive in before the smell of grilling mullet lured us out again for supper.We saved Mistra for last. On the terraces of the hillsides of the mainland, the vines would have been ready for harvest, while below in the harbour would have bobbed the ships of Venetians with the winged lion on their sails, dwarfing the occasional trading bark from Norwich, Whitby and York. Perhaps from up here you would hear the cries of the sailors as the barrels of wine were rolled down into the hold of the boats and the shipwrights scraped the barnacles off the hulls the better to escape Barbary corsairs and Greek pirates.The sun was sinking, and we were hot from our climb.

On three sides the cliffs are so steep that habitation is impossible, but on the fourth, a small ledge juts out into the ocean, defended by two land and one sea wall. It is in this small space, sheltered under the lee of the cliff, that the impregnable Byzantine port was built, a fortified town that would continue to hold out against the Turks even after the fall of Constantinople.A single gateway – too narrow to allow cars in – leads into a maze of narrow alleys, steep cobbled streets and vaulted tunnels, opening up into the occasional square or piazza in a manner not unlike the old city of Jerusalem. Spiralling down out of the mountains we debouched out of a river valley and saw the great fortress-rock rising sheer and white out of the ocean, connected to the mainland by a fragile tidal causeway. Even when there appears to be no pretext for such war they will invent one of their own volition; for they are all in love with weapons.”We arrived at Monemvasia late in the evening. Even the most powerful Byzantine emperors had trouble controlling these mountains and monitoring the blood feuds that thrived between the different clans of the Taygetus. As the 14th-century emperor Manuel II Palaiologos wrote to his friend Euthymius: “It seems to me that it is the fate of the Peloponnesians to prefer civil war to peace.

Orthodox monasteries hang like swallows’ nests from the crevices of the rock face; only monks, mountaineers and the occasional shepherd boy pass this way. The houses of the mountain villages are wooden and whitewashed, and vines tangle up their projecting balconies and tumble over the lattices.Then the mountains close in again and you find yourself winding in elaborate S-bends up into wild and remote territory, through tangles of conifer forests alongside narrow switchback roads defended by the ruined towers of the despots of Morea. But as you rise, the air becomes cooler and you find yourself in hanging river valleys where the mountains widen into a cascade of terraces with groves of citrus trees protected by windbreaks of cypress. At first you pass under bare hillsides whose rocky soil is too dry for vines and can only support gorse and occasionally olives. As in classical times, you still have to swing inland and wind your way through the passes of the Taygetus.The route is one of the most spectacular in Europe. You leave the cliffs, promontories and blue sea gulfs behind and corkscrew inland, past roadside shrines with their solitary icons and flickering candles. For all that the water is clear and the beaches are easy and inviting, the interior is rugged in the extreme.

Even today, no one has tried to construct a road along the coast between Argos and Monemvasia – the hills are simply too steep and impassable. We pored over maps and worked out a route through Mistra and Monemvasia that would combine enough beach time and swimming for the children with enough frescoes and basilicas for the grown-ups.Unusually, everything worked out perfectly and it proved one of our happiest ever family holidays. Monemvasia was the source of much of the wine drunk in medieval England, and in time the English changed the Greek name to one easier on domestic ears and tongues. Monemvasia became Malmsey – as if it was somewhere in Wiltshire, perhaps a suburb of Malmesbury.The combination of this stirring of memories from childhood history lessons, the fabulous richness of the treasures displayed in the Met exhibition and the tantalising pictures of the citadels from which they came, proved an irresistible combination: on our return from New York, we got out an atlas and a guide book and began working out an itinerary for the summer.We looked at villas in Sparta, the Mani and on the southern shores of the Morea before finally booking a beautiful house, with a pool, perched up on the edge of a hillside olive grove overlooking the blue waters of Navarino Bay and the beaches of Pylos.