🇬🇷 Magnificent PYLOS, Costa Navarino, Peloponnese, Greece

good morning sometimes I come somewhere in Greece and I feel a weight of responsibility to do the place Justice and pilos here behind me is one of those places it is amazing it's not only god of Mycenaean in history a Venetian history a Byzantine history but it has two castles it has one of the best beaches in the world it has the largest natural Harbor in Greece and it was witnessed to a naval battle between five Global powers it's an amazing place I'm going to try and explain it it's it's fabulous and I hope you enjoy let's go so before we head off I wanted to give you an idea of where we are here in front of us is pilos with this little Harbor of the yachts and then to the right of pilos and behind it we see the South entrance to the largest natural Harbor in Greece which now presents itself in front of us this is where the Battle of navarino was fought and pilos was for a Time called navarino but we'll talk about that in a few minutes and then round to the right here just over here we have what's known as the north Gap just to the right of the north cap on the top here perhaps you can make out the original castle that's where we're headed now so I hope you're going to enjoy this there was a big naval battle in this Harbor we'll talk about that when we're back in Peerless but right now let's go off to the castle 7 A.M the sun's coming up and I've just driven around navarino Bay from Pilots over there shaded in the background by the Sun to the north entrance to this natural Harbor the largest natural Harbor in Greece my intention now is to climb this hill and go and see the castle I have good reason for doing this this is the original Castle but I'll explain that when I get up there and it looks like it's going to be a bit of a climb soon this will be a fun one the path at least looks like it's relatively well sound posted and walked good we'll see as we get up there I'm really looking forward to this one I've given myself a couple of hours to do it um I'm just going to take it easy it's a 45 minute walk apparently so that should work out quite well for me right amazing straight off the bat here you see largest natural Harbor in Greece with pilos basically Under the Sun and then there are two entrances I said this is a narrower of the two entrances the north entrance is a bit more rugged apparently but beautiful on its own completely natural nothing man-made here apart from obviously the castle and very impressive here we have our first view of the castle up here I've only been going maybe 10 minutes I've just left that natural pass through into the harbor behind me and you can see here the castle on the hill so it's looking quite positive beautiful day as well come early because it's going to be hot today and I didn't fancy doing this in 25 or 26 degree heat which is something you may consider if you decide to come and follow my first steps up here so we've been going about 10 minutes and I've just turned around I don't know if you can hear the noise of the Waves here quite a raw but this is the entrance or the exit the northern entrance to the harbor you see absolutely magnificent brutal rocks we want to sail onto those and the Mediterranean Beyond beautiful and really our first proper look at the castle and its scale as I said there are two castles in Pilots this is the older one it was abandoned in the 15th century built by the venetians from then onwards but when the Ottomans came here the Ottomans came here in about 1500 they abandoned this Castle because they said it was too ruined to defend and in the wrong place and they built the Newcastle which we'll look at in a few minutes not to be confused with as you climb the path becomes distinctly more mythological I suppose if you like and I really feel like I'm stepping in the footsteps of the ancestors who used to live here this must have been the only path up this side I think there's another one the other side but this is meant to be easier to climb and another view of part of the castle given that it was abandoned 500 years ago it's in a remarkably good shape very typical Byzantine and Venetian architecture and it's not a bad climb I have to say although yet again this is really not one for kids don't think about a pushchair either no chance and another great view of the natural Harbor the South entrance over this hill and the north entrance here rolling down into the Mediterranean I know I've said it and showing it but it just gets better and better the higher you come it's not bad climb it's taken me 25 minutes or so to get here I don't know if this was the main gate or not a bit precarious nowadays but we're undermining itself but we shall go through there I think after 500 years I'll be very unlucky if it collapses certainly collapsed a bit though look at this this is not meant to be here it's not what you call it maintained Castle big though amazing though to see to see March roof this was the arch roof that's collapsed in here and then this then this is just collapse down amazing big old place up here and it may surprise some of you I haven't actually come up here to see the castle I know I like castles and one like this is too good to miss with the view here there we can see in the distance pilos which used to be known as navarino in Byzantine times they knew it as an avarina in pre-bicentine times it was known as pilos after the Greek war of independence it became pilos again and on the right here we have the Newcastle protecting of course the town itself good for you see what I want to see I have to go right to the top there so I'm going to try and find the PATH up there and avoid any snakes on the way well there is a path it's actually relatively easy to find if you're looking for it it's a little overgrown it's not too bad probably be easier in the summer when everything's dried back you can see it's not actually too far up here this is not actually an easy walk from this point onward we're gonna have to be a little bit careful around here because I need to get over there in fact I think I need to get over there into the right so I have to say within the cast itself this is actually one of the more difficult walks I've had it's not easy but I wanted to get up here show you one of the absolute best beaches in the world it's considered one of the 10 best in many Publications and it's this beach here and this and this little perfectly symmetrical Cove there is a beach called void the Killer Beach and it's just fabulous and I don't know if you can see on this headlight opposite us there is a tomb and this is in my cn2 follows I think it's called a sort of pyramidal tomb built into the ground so if you try to come up to the castle from the beach this is the entrance and I would not recommend it I would recommend the way I came I was lucky really I just spent a lot of time looking at the maps and deciding which way to come this is not the way to come you want to come up from the North Passage into the harbor it's a relatively easy walk don't come up here and then coming around to the side of the castle so we have the beach here just glimpsing it in the lagoon this is the other reason I came the other view I wanted to share with you here we have the Lagoon beautiful with the sun rising above it Promontory of land separates the Lagoon from navarino Bay with peel off in the distance and you get no idea when you stand in pilos over there but this Lagoon exists or indeed the land that you see is so tiny and thin and slivery and down there we have numerous large Hotel complexes just astonishing so I didn't come up here for the castle I came up here for this and awe-inspiring and tremendous view from this height but it's a bit of a height you want to be a little bit careful here God it's good look at this I hope it's worth it I hope you're enjoying what I'm looking at now if it comes out all right on the camera because it's awe-inspiring one of the best views I have seen in a long time and I'm just going to pan around it again because I can't get enough of it it's just beautiful this morning so I'm now going to go back down to pilos I'm going to look at the Newcastle and the town itself talk a little bit about its history was an important Mycenaean town called pilos and we'll have a little walk around so I hope you enjoy I have to say this is why I enjoy this I love hiking climbing exploring places going places perhaps most people won't but walking down now Sun's still rising and I feel like singing Mama near at this moment it's just amazing Greece any time of year but spring summer fabulous early May still not too hot eight o'clock in the morning fabulous so I had a bit time to spare decided rather than go straight back to pilos I'd walk with the midgets around the Lagoon and I'm walking literally around the edge of the Lagoon and go and see this beach so I hope it's worth it it should be it's meant to be fabulous but here we are the Lagoon Placid beautiful seen loads of fish walking along here and right the castle is somewhere and rather unnervingly there was a sign back there saying stay away from the cliff but then the path goes along by the cliff you use rocks which are clearly fallen down at one time or another from the cliff where Midge spray fine actually right their season yeah but okay and here we are 20 minutes walk a few midges and probably the most beautiful beach in Greece pure and simple very little matches there are some fabulous features in Greece but this is one of them just amazing we'll pop down and have a very quick look then I gotta walk back actually it was relatively easy as a walk so the very last bit where you've got four or five minutes of sand dunes and the sand just gives them the foot but wow beautiful sand you can probably see very shallow very sheltered from the main sea absolutely fabulous forgive me if I don't walk all the way around I unfortunately am up against time pressure now but I couldn't not come and see this just amazing and up on the hill behind us we have the castle where we were a few minutes ago and that little opening just there in the middle that's where you have to go and if you climb up here I wouldn't recommend it I would seriously not recommend going up there I would go around the way I came from the north side the South Side actually but from the north entrance to the harbor just beautiful look at it this morning this morning it's 8 30 now I am the only person on one of the most perfect beaches in Greece well you're here with me but that doesn't really count I wanted to bring you along so here I am finally down in pilos or as it used to be known navarino looking at the harbor here and to the Newcastle I think it's gonna be quite interesting very different architecture to the old Byzantine Castle so we'll have a quick look at that and then we'll come down and have a losses so the venetians had held navarino as they called it he lost nowadays um from about 1210 they held it until 1500 when the Ottomans came here and captured the town and indeed the Pella police as a whole in 1485 to 1500 and the Ottomans realized that the Venetian Castle was just visited the old castle was in such a safe disrepair and also of a style that they couldn't maintain so they built this New Castle here that we're going to have a look at now beautiful smell of pine trees up here now entry was six euros um it was only three years to with only but as they informed me here there's a fantastic Museum to have a look at so I'll have to go and look at that as well apparently it's free it's not free I've just paid six euros to come in but anyway you can see Byzantine Castle but what I'm really interested in apart from obviously the museum is what's on the hill here because this is much more like the palmidi for example in Napier the palm of the Annapolis was built about 1685 to 1715 actually by the venetians but it was built to withstand cannon fire and that's a huge difference between this castle and the old castle that we've just looked at this Castle was built to withstand Cannon far which was not a consideration of course what the Byzantine consoles um so this one but at least the keep of this Castle the main Center of this Castle is built on an octagonal style which allows it to repel cannon fire and ensure that when they put cannons on the walls as they did they had fantastic views from all angles big impressive main gate but not really defensive I don't think they would expect to be attacked although the walls do demonstrate that they were built for defense does not look like they expect for this part of the castle castle to actually be attacked so this is a very typical layout for a an ottoman castle built in the 16th century in that it's an octagonal design eight sides each side has a corner on it which they can put gun in placements on which would look over each and every angle of attack and the walls were at a slight angle and they were built to deflect Cannonball which was not the case as I said with the Byzantine castles I'm not sure how far up we can go I'm gonna go and have a look we always had this inner Courtyard you can see where people could live they could they could store some materials safely very different style so the castle we've just been in as you can see foreign so you can see you could range cannons along the walls up here and you could angle those cannons out over the fields or the sea and probably up to 45 degree difference but then on each of the corners you have these prominent trees if you like I don't know what they're properly called but these were incredibly important because what they gave you was the ability to shoot along the length of the wall and also to cover other angles that you wouldn't otherwise be able to see so you can see here for example the southern entrance into the natural Harbor and it gave you great coverage with Canon if wanted to bring a boat in here the Castle would really protect you and stop you from doing it you can see beautiful kit um Arch there where the Seas cut through absolutely fabulous we get a great view here of the curtain wall but the person was not really the major defense of this Castle it was to stop people getting in yes but the major defense of this Castle is what we're standing in now this gun emplacement up here where the guns would have a fantastic range over the bay and protect the town of navarino as it was at the time against attack from Pirates or from the venetians or whoever else was going to come up there a little Museum here about the Sunken Treasures of the panopaneers which might be quite interesting just a quick look because of course and treasures have been found underwater the main Museum here it's fantastic so this Museum Castle was essentially most animal prehistoric periods of Enos because as I said it was a nice scene City that was you can see there the castle at Bruno Mars but there's a palace of nest for about 14 kilometers from here well worth visiting I'm visiting in this video it's just too far out of my way but Nestor and peanuts was mentioned in the Iliad by Homer when Odysseus went to see Nesta in Phillips and that demonstrates the history of who knows as it was and then never only and then again feels and a lot of these agreements that they found in the locality becoming you and exploring so having looked at the history of this place up to modern times the mycions the byzantines the Ottomans let's consider the more recent history starting with the Greek war of independence um in 1821 the Greeks rose up and they very quickly took and liberated navarino as it was at that time and then in 1825 Ibrahim Pasha the ottoman General came through here with about 25 000 soldiers and basically raised it to the ground it disappeared so 20th of September 1827 in this Harbor there was the Battle of navarino it was a huge scale naval battle with ships sailing ships of the line the type that we would see at Trafalgar for example think of Nelson and it was the last naval battle involving that type of ship these sailing ships and there were 60 Turkish ottoman Turkish and Egyptian ships ranged against about 27 British Russian and friendships but the British Russian and friendships whilst outnumbers were far more technically Advanced and the crews were better trained and they won the day the Battle of navarino wiped out the ottoman Navy and it set up the Greeks to become an independent nation it was a hugely important battle and it happened here in this Bay funnily enough there was virtually no sailing despite them being sailing trips so almost all moored just firing at each other but the three Admirals who won the day are heroes in Greece as a result of this battle and it was from that point onwards that pilos existed again pilos had existed in ancient times has then been renamed navarino it was destroyed as I said by Turkish in 1825 and in 1828 1829 they started to speak Filipinos and that is what we see here today and the main square of pilos which is just around here is fantastic very very famous and Greece mainly for the large platania trees which exist here they're sort of chestnuts in a way I suppose um I'm not a aggro whatever it is I'm not an expert on trees so I apologize for that but you'll see as we come around this corner the square is beautifully shaded by these platania trees and it's fantastic think it's got loads of shops loads of cafes loads of restaurants and the square is actually known as the three animal Square unsurprisingly named after the three Admirals of the Victorious Fleet that fought the Battle of Navarone navarino here this is not the Guns of Navarone this is the Battle of navarina so it's beautiful here and you can see if you want something down here for a Politics as many many people do it's well worth spending a couple of days here and exploring and people will come here in the summer for the Costa navarino the navarino coast as it's known because it's probably some of the best in Mainland Greece as close as you'll get to being on an island without having to get an island which is fantastic because the islands are great they don't really let you explore Greece you have to go from Island trial and try and you're beholden to the ferries if you get a car and you drive around the peloponnese which I would highly advise then you can really see Greece and you can still pop over into the items representative Islands just off the coast of the Philippines plenty of ferries that can get to but you can see the square is large very well beautiful and as I said it's just called the three atmosphere but in the center of the square we'll see in a minute there's a little Memorial to those three animals I can't remember their names there was uh codrington who was the British there was Hayden who I think was the Russian believe it or not and there was terrain or someone who was the French and you can see here a memorial to three Victorious Atwoods and then died in the Battle of navarino free and Greece from the ottoman occupations existed at that time and I would highly recommend coming to pilos it's well worth exploring you can see it fantastic so I hope you've enjoyed my little walk around filos you can see two castles my seeing civilization Byzantine ottoman the Battle of navarino the largest Harbor in Greece natural Harbor in Greece and also the best beach it's got everything I would highly advise coming here please watch some of my videos subscribe if you like what I do and I'll see you again soon thank you

Channel: Greece Explored 🇬🇷

Views: 8,758

Keywords: Pylos, Pilos, Kalamata, Costa Navarino, Navarone, Hotel Resort Greece, Best Beach Greece, Athens, Peloponnese, Battle of Navarino, Beautiful Greece, Greek Wildlife

Id: jh-PQ-ed20I

Length: 24min 8sec (1448 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023