Destination Overview
Patras
Patras is not an island. It does not have the postcard geometry that drives most Greek travel decisions. What it has is something rarer and more useful: it is a genuine city that functions as the perfect base for one of the richest clusters of destinations in the entire country. Greece's third-largest city sits at the western edge of the Peloponnese, where the Gulf of Patras opens toward the Ionian Sea. The Rio–Antirrio bridge — one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world — connects it to central Greece in a few minutes. The port connects it to Italy, the Ionian Islands and Cephalonia by overnight ferry. And the road network radiating from it leads, within two hours in any direction, to Ancient Olympia, Delphi, the rack-railway town of Kalavrita, the beautiful Aigialeia coast, the historic bay of Nafpaktos, the wetlands and Venetian walls of Messolonghi, and the long sandy beaches of Ilia. The city itself is worth time before the day trips begin. The Byzantine castle sits above the old town on a hill with views over the gulf to the mountains of Aetolia-Acarnania. The seafront is long, lively and genuinely Patra-ine in character — a city that moves to its own rhythm and does not perform for visitors. And every February or March, for three weeks, the whole world discovers what Patras already knew: its Carnival is one of the great popular festivals in Europe.