Private Arcadia & Monastery Tour

Arcadia — the central, mountainous region of the Peloponnese — has held a place in the Western imagination as the quintessential rural idyll for over two thousand years. The Roman poet Virgil's pastoral ideal was set here; the painters of the Renaissance returned to it endlessly. The actual landscape lives up to the reputation: dense pine and fir forests on slopes that rise to 2,400 metres, deep limestone gorges with monasteries built into the cliffs, and stone-built mountain villages that have changed very little in three hundred years.

The centrepiece of the region is the Lousios Gorge — a narrow ravine of pale rock and clear running water, with three Byzantine monasteries built into the cliff faces. The Prodromou Monastery is the most dramatic: a small white building seemingly glued to the rock face, accessible only on foot via a stone path through the gorge, still actively inhabited by a small community of monks. The walk through the gorge between monasteries is one of the most rewarding short hikes in mainland Greece.

The region's villages — Dimitsana, Stemnitsa, Karytaina — are built almost entirely of grey stone, with red-tile roofs and central squares shaded by enormous plane trees. The food is mountain food: slow-cooked lamb, wild greens, hilopites pasta with cheese, walnut cake. Most of the small guesthouses are family-run and have been for generations.

From €1,850 for two to three days, the journey includes the private vehicle and driver throughout, one or two nights in a pre-selected stone-built guesthouse with breakfast, on-board Wi-Fi and water, and a small Greek farewell gift. Arcadia is the right journey for guests who want quiet — green, cool, slow, and deeply Greek — as the contrast to a longer trip otherwise spent on the coast or in the cities.