The town of Corinth, lying about an hour's drive southwest of Athens, is a dull and uninviting place. Majority of the travel guides on Greece do not devote more than a page to the town and its history and are emphatic in reminding the tourists that it is not a place to spend the night, unless absolutely necessary. The town lies off the National Road connecting mainland Greece with Peloponnese known for its attractions such as Ancient Olympia, Mycenae, Epidauros and Naufplio. Motorists quite often overlook Corinth with its nondescript concrete edifices and rugged landscape. The broad, six-lane National Road even hides the 19th century engineering feat for which Corinth is currently best known. It is only as one travels a few kilometres further south into the Peloponnese that an outcrop of limestone emerges to the right, with decrepit walls of a fortress encircling the summit, that one realises that this drab town may also have had a history.

Corinth's present state is a far cry from around two and a half millennia ago when the predecessor of the present town reached its zenith as an economic, commercial and maritime power -- competing in the succeeding centuries with the likes of Athens and Sparta as one of the great powers of Greece. Since then the region has seen myriad wars and endured several devastating earthquakes -- one in 1858 flattening the old town and another in 1928 destroying large parts of the new town, its power, prosperity and importance rising and falling with the passage of time.

My search for the region's relatively lesser- publicised history took place on an unusually hot day in early August. I avoided the modern town, and meandered my way through narrow rural roads past isolated houses and unkempt plots of land to the village of Ancient Corinth. The sun shone brilliantly, four aged villagers taking refuge under an olive tree engaged in small talk, couple of tourist buses prepared to leave the village as I made my way to the ruins of Ancient Corinth, right in the middle of the village.

Having dealt with the unpleasantness of a gruff ticket seller, I entered the ruins. Populated since prehistoric times, the ruins present a motley picture since the buildings were constructed on the same locations in different eras. However, the ruins excavated so far date primarily from the Roman times, while traces of the ancient Greek city have been largely obliterated. These excavations, which continue to this day, were begun by the Greek Archaeological Society in 1882 and were systematically taken forward by the American School of Classical Studies beginning from 1896.

Yet the most outstanding and prominent ruin on the site -- the Temple of Apollo -- is from the ancient Greek period. Built around the 6th century BC, it is one of the oldest such temples in Greece and is a fine example of early Doric style. Seven of its original 38 columns, each one entirely carved from a single piece of stone, still stand. These rose majestically against the backdrop of a clear blue sky as I glanced up at them beyond the Fountain of Glauce, one of the three main fountains in the ruins of Ancient Corinth. They provided an exquisite reminder to the handful of visitors of the glory days of 6th and 5th century BC as they clicked their cameras to capture the vista.

Ancient Corinth had, in fact, taken its initial steps towards its first great period of prosperity earlier, in the 8th century BC, when it established its colonies in the west, resulting in the expansion of its economy and the development of its shipping industry. Later, the economic, artistic and intellectual flowering of the ancient city reached its peak during the reign of the tyrant Periander (627–580 BC) during whose reign Ancient Corinth established its colonies throughout the known world and became a meeting place for merchants, sailors and wealthy men, making it a "sinful" yet delightful city.

Centuries later, ancient Corinth again flourished under Macedonian rule before becoming the capital of the Achaean Confederacy shortly after 200 BC. Sacked by the Roman general Lucius Mummius in 146 BC, it remained deserted for a century before Julius Caesar began rebuilding it around 44 BC and it again became prosperous under Roman rule. Centuries followed with various invaders sacking and burning the city and earthquakes flattening it until the Turks overran it. It was during Turks' domination that the flourishing village slowly grew into a town.

Trying to imagine life in the village a couple of millennia ago, I meandered past the Agora, an open space 160 by 95 metres in size, littered with slabs and stones of all shapes and sizes, some with intricate carvings, others inscribed with ancient Greek language, with traces of shops on at least three sides, until I reached what once was the Lechaion Road connecting the village to the port of Lechaion on the Corinthian Gulf. The Peirene fountain lay to my right as I went down the steps on to the Lechaion Road. Originally built in the 7th century BC before being altered many times, the Peirene fountain used to supply the village with water from water tanks concealed in a fountain house with a six-arched façade. Like many places in Greece, the Peirene fountain also finds mention in mythology. It is said that Peirene, daughter of the river god Asopus, had two sons by Poseidon, Kenchrias and Leches. She wept so much when Artemis killed her son Kenchrias that the gods, rather than let all the precious water go to waste, turned her into a fountain.

To my left stretched the ruins of North Basilica, originally built in the 1st century AD and probably used as a courthouse. Ruins of a fish market, so called because of its layout of small shops, dating from the 5th century BC, are said to be below the foundations of the North Basilica. I returned back to the Agora and examined the remains of the 1st century AD Julian Basilica that served as a courtyard, on the eastern end before moving south to the foundations of a stoa built to accommodate the notables summoned in 337 BC by King Philip II to sign oaths of allegiance to Macedon.

A priest added to the atmosphere by leading a religious ceremony under one of the few trees that dot the ruins, with mostly middle-aged participants standing deferentially in a semi-circle and occasionally reciting hymns in Greek language after him as I walked the length of the stoa to the row of 12 Roman shops built behind a colonnade and known simply as West Shops. I went up a broad flight of steps that interrupted the row of West Shops and found myself facing three white columns, all that remains now of what is known as the Roman Temple of Octavia (Temple E). Just to my right, stairs led into the Corinth museum.

The shade inside the museum was a welcome relief from the midday sun, though I found the museum itself, built in 1931, quite small for a place that once enjoyed such affluence and power, with only three rooms housing some Greek and Roman statues, mosaics, figurines, reliefs and friezes. The statues of Emperor Nero, circa 60 AD, and Emperor Augustus (27 BC–14 BC), both found from the Julian Basilica, caught my eye, as did the elaborate relief slabs in the cloister.

My next destination was that outcrop of limestone, called Acrocorinth, which serves as the only reminder of Corinth's glory to motorists on the National Road. I drove up a couple of kilometres on a winding road south of the ruins till I reached a basic parking lot. The fortress walls snaked up above me encircling what once must have been a bustling locality. Behind me, in the distance, I could make out the remains of a smaller fortress atop a steep cliff. I crossed a small wooden drawbridge and moved towards the fortress.

Having successfully negotiated the three successive imposing gates built for defence purposes and connected by a series of inclined ramps, I found myself staring at a vast open, sloping area, covered with wind-swept and sun-dried grass, the two summits, one in the north-east, other in the south-west of the hill, clearly visible in front of me. Not much had survived the ravages of time and nature, except a couple of dilapidated, square edifices that stood in the distance to my left and parts of stonewalls here and there. A flight of stone steps led up to a point between the two summits. Despite being exhausted after the climb up past three gates in the blazing afternoon sun, I was not returning before reaching the highest point of the rock where once stood the Temple of Aphrodite.

Acrocorinth towers 575 metres above the ruins of Ancient Corinth. The original fortress was built in ancient times and was modified over the years by the Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Venetians and Turks. Its significance became apparent to me as I reached the summit. Standing where once used to be the Temple of Aphrodite, I could see far into the distant valleys, flecks of clouds casting their shadows on the surrounding hills. In front of me, as I looked north beyond the modern town of Corinth, was the isthmus of Corinth, separating the gleaming blue waters of Aegean Sea to the right and the Ionian Sea to the left. Clearly, the site must have been of immense military importance in the days gone by. But now it was a mere jumble of ruined buildings and walls hidden behind overgrown golden-brown grass and overflown by modern aircraft flying west out of Athens.

My last stop on the daylong trip to Corinth was the Corinth canal that cuts through the isthmus connecting the two seas. A feat of 19th century engineering, it seems to attract more visitors than the ruins of Ancient Corinth and Acrocorinth. The concept of cutting a canal through the isthmus, however, came from ancient times. Periander, during whose reign Ancient Corinth was at the peak of its power, is generally said to have first proposed the project.

However, the magnitude of the task defeated him and he opted instead to build a paved slipway, called diolkos, across which sailors dragged small ships on rollers. Later, many leaders, including Alexander the Great, toyed with the idea, until Emperor Nero, in 62 AD, actually began the project by striking the first blow himself with a gold shovel. His project, however, was soon halted by the invasion of Gauls and languished for best part of two millennia. It was eventually in the last two decades of the 19th century that a French engineering company undertook and completed the project thereby reducing the distance between the ports of the Aegean sea and the Adriatic sea by 131 nautical miles.

Like all visitors, I walked gingerly on one of the two pedestrian steel bridges that run parallel to the road crossing the canal. Down below the greenish-blue water glistened in the late afternoon sunshine as a boat moved out into the Aegean sea in the distance. Cameras clicked as people gazed in awe at the steep slopes down below. Opened on August 6, 1893 in the presence of King George I of Greece and Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary and with a length of over 6 kilometres and a bottom width of 21 metres, the canal now sees around 12500 transits annually. A simple and elegant memorial dedicated to two Hungarians, Istvan Turr and Bela Gerster, credited with having planned, organised and directed the construction of the canal, was inaugurated in May 2009 at a corner of a pedestrian bridge.

During the visit, I was able to, in a matter of few hours, cover the gamut of Corinth's history, from the ancient Temple of Apollo to the ramparts of Acrocorinth, from the intricate statues in the Corinth museum to the masterpiece of engineering that is Corinth Canal. It is important that Corinth's current relative anonymity should not obscure the rich history of the region which once flourished as an undisputed powerhouse in the then known world.

Email: amsumra@gmail.com