KALAMÁTA is by far the largest city of the southern Peloponnese, spreading for some four kilometers back from the sea, and into the hills. It's quite a metropolitan shock after the small-town life of the rest of the region. The city has a long-established export trade in olives and figs from the Messinian plain, flourishing as a commercial centre during the Turkish period and as one of the first independent Greek towns in 1821, with the first newspaper to be printed on Greek soil five months later. In 1986 however, Kalamáta was near the epicenter of a severe earthquake that killed twenty people and left 12,000 families homeless. But for the fact that the quake struck in the early evening, when many people were outside, the death toll would have been much higher. As it was, large numbers of buildings were leveled throughout the town. The intensity of the damage was in part due to the city's position over several subterranean streams, but mostly, it seems, the legacy of poor 1960s construction. The result was an economic depression across the whole area, from which the town is only now recovering properly.
The City
Few visitors plan to linger here; however, if you are traveling for a while, it's a good place to get things done, and there are other simple pleasures such as eating at tavernas among the neoclassical houses on the waterfront or around the centre, which comprises the wide avenue formed by the long Platía Konstandínou Dhiadhókhnou.
With a little time to fill, a twenty-minute walk north of the centre will bring you to the most pleasing area of the city, around the Kástro. Built by the Franks and destroyed and adapted in turn by the Turks and Venetians, the kástro survived the quake with little damage; an amphitheatre at its base hosts summer concerts. A short way south of the kástro, at Polyzóglou 6 is the excellent Benakion Archeological Museum (Tues-Sun 8.30am-3pm; ?1.50), which houses a modest but well-labeled collection of tomb relief’s, sculptures and smaller artifacts from the surrounding areas, as well as a colorful Roman mosaic from Desylla.
Kalamáta's beach, along Navarínou, a ten-minute bus ride (#1) south of the centre, is always crowded along the central section. The gritty sands are functional but improve continuously eastwards until the popular gay area beyond the Filoxenia Beach Hotel. If you prefer to walk to the harbor from the centre, it's a thirty-minute walk down Aristoménous, and you can wander in the park alongside the narrow bottom end of the street and admire the old steam engines, rolling stock and mechanical paraphernalia at the open-air Railway Museum. |
|
|
|
