JUICY FRUITS: Almost all Greece’s oranges are grown in the Peloponnese – last year it produced more than 1.2 million, ranking the country third in Europe, after Spain and Italy.

ANCIENT GLORIES

Just over the Corinth Canal in the Peloponnese, the 575m Akrokorinthos looms into view like a landlocked Rock of Gibraltar. For ancient travellers, this mountain was the equivalent of a giant red light: on top, a thousand sacred prostitutes waited at the temple of Aphrodite. Modern visitors have to be content with the impressive views, just below, of the ancient ruins at Corinth (00 30 274 103 1207; £4) – a Mediterranean powerhouse, which was razed to the ground by the Romans in 146BC, and later rebuilt by Julius Caesar.

Head half an hour south of Corinth to see the pale hills of Nemea, which are pinstriped with grapevines. Rising over the ruins, the temple of Zeus, with seven re-erected columns, is strikingly photogenic, and there are also well-preserved baths, the stadium, and the gold Aidonia treasure (recently rescued from art thieves) to see in the museum. Ancient Nemea (00 30 274 602 2739, www.nemea.org; £3) was famous for its biannual Panhellenic games, a smaller version of the Olympics, which will be re-enacted this year on June 21-22. Disappointingly though, unlike the ancient athletes, the modern participants wear clothes.

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Another half hour south of Nemea, you’ll encounter brooding Mycenae (00 30 275 107 6585; £5.50). Even in its ruined state, the austere hilltop citadel bristles with power, fate and doom, but it softens in spring with wild flowers and butterflies. Walk through the Lion Gate to the foundations of the palace where Agamemnon was murdered by his wife on his return from Troy. Don’t miss the new museum and the Treasury of Atreus, built around 1250BC. At 14m high, it was the world’s largest single-span building before Hadrian built the Pantheon in Rome.

Drive south of Mycenae to the ancient city of Argos, now an archetypal Greek market town. Further south, amid the orange groves, waits Homer’s ‘wall-girt’ Tiryns, the birthplace of Hercules and another World Heritage Site well worth a visit (00 30 275 202 2657; £2). A breathtaking underground casement gallery runs within the walls, which are eight metres thick in places.

Half an hour east of Tiryns, only the buzz of cicadas (and the voices of visitors) disturb the peace at bucolic Epidauros (00 30 275 302 2009; £4) – the most famous hospital-complex in the ancient world. It was dedicated to Asklepios, the gentle god of healing, who was born nearby. Most beautiful here is the circular tholos, a dry-stone beehive-shaped tomb used (probably) to house the cult’s sacred snakes. Today, Epidauros is best known for its sublime 15,000-seat, 2nd-century-BC theatre scooped out of the hillside. Even modern-day venues can’t improve upon its perfect acoustics: you can hear a match struck on stage from any seat in the house. Ancient tragedies are still performed here during the annual Epidauros Festival (00 30 275 302 2026).

MODERN MARVELS

Just getting to the Peloponnese is dramatic across the Corinth Canal (www.corinthcanal.com), a six-kilometre blue ribbon cut through 55m of rock, linking the Aegean with the Gulf of Corinth. Roman Emperor Nero started the project, but it wasn’t until 1881 that engineers started digging again. In ancient times ships were dragged across the isthmus on a stone road – which took long enough for the sailors to visit Corinth’s sacred prostitutes.

Follow the signs for Loutraki, a favourite Athenian beach retreat, featuring a Roman-style spa (source of Greece’s best-selling mineral water) and the country’s oldest casino. Blue Flag beaches dot the coast – 16km northwest is Lake Vouliagmeni, a blue lagoon next to the seldom-visited archaeological site of Perachora.

The real must-see town is Nafplion, tucked between the mountains and Gulf of Argolis. After independence from the Ottomans, it was briefly the capital of Greece, and has at its core a delightful Venetian, Turkish and Neoclassical jumble of narrow lanes, filled with boutiques and some of the area’s top restaurants and bars. It took three forts to guard this jewel: the pretty Bourtzi on an islet in the harbour; the Akronafplia on the mountain, and at the summit, the dauntingly spectacular Palamidi Fortress (00 30 275 202 8036; £3) built by the Venetians. Note there’s a back road you can drive up, if the 999 steps don’t tempt you.

The Akte peninsula east of Nafplion offers a sheltered climate and beaches, swish villas and resort hotels. Hilly Porto Heli has a popular coastline for sailing, windsurfing and diving, while its wooded enclave Kosta offers water taxis to Spetses, the island of John Fowles’s The Magus. One of the area’s oddities is at Didyma: a hole 150m in diameter and 80m deep, with two 15th-century churches built inside to stop the sky from falling again (experts say it’s a natural sinkhole).

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