Buried Italy Series - Myth And Sea: An Odyssey Through Italy And Greece

Arrive in Rome and settle into the heart of the Eternal City. This evening we gather for a welcoming wine tasting and a light supper in the ruins of the ancient Roman theater of Pompey, where we lay out the story we are about to follow — the route of Odysseus, mapped onto the real coastlines of Italy and Greece — over the week ahead. Overnight in Rome.

After breakfast we venture south along the coast, into the land where myth and geography are one and the same. We look up at Mount Circe, the great headland the ancients named for the enchantress who turned Odysseus's men to swine, then climb to the Temple of Jupiter Anxur high above Terracina — the finest viewpoint on this entire stretch of shore, where the eye sweeps all the way back across the shimmering coastline to Mount Circe itself. On we go to Sperlonga, a lovely whitewashed village tumbling in bright cubes down to the sea — some say it was later founded by colonizers from Sparta. Here, inside the Villa of Tiberius, we meet the emperor's astonishing grotto: a private banqueting cave adorned with a monumental sculpture cycle of the Odyssey itself, unique in all the world. We continue along the coast to the seaside town of Gaeta. Overnight in Gaeta.

This morning we head out to the very cliffs where, in Book 10 of the Odyssey — the episode brought once more to the screen in the recent film retelling of the epic — the giant Laestrygonians lined the heights and hurled down boulders onto Odysseus's trapped fleet, sinking eleven of his twelve ships. Entering the Sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, we explore the riven Split Mountain (Montagna Spaccata) and the pine-clad heights of Monte Orlando, reading millions of years of geological heritage in the shattered rock while long views open over the blue Tyrrhenian below. Then we wander the historic center of Gaeta — the town that carries the name of Caieta, the nurse of Aeneas whom Virgil buried on this very shore, and the program creator Joseph's favorite small town in all of Italy. Overnight in Gaeta.

After breakfast we venture into the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields), the volcanic “Burning Fields” of the Bay of Naples, where the myths and legends of Homer, geology, and Roman power collide. We stand on the shore of Lake Avernus, the still, brooding crater lake the Romans believed was the very doorway to the underworld, and walk the ruins of Cumae, the first Greek colony on the Italian mainland — where this whole “Greeks in Italy” story physically begins. Cumae was the seat of the Sibyl, the prophetic priestess of Apollo who uttered her riddles from a long, rock-cut cavern, and the place where Daedalus is said to have come to earth after his son Icarus flew too near the sun. From here we visit the Castle of Baia, which sits on top of the Villa of Julius Caesar and where we can see artifacts dating back to the ancient Greeks. After time for lunch, we board a glass-bottomed boat and sail out over the sunken Roman city of Baiae in the Gulf of Pozzuoli, gazing down through the water at the drowned villas of emperors — where our local expert tells the twin tales of Baios, helmsman of Odysseus, and Misenus, the trumpeter of Aeneas, the two companions who gave their names to this coast. We will also learn about the pretty pastel island of Procida as we point out little Vivara, which was an important bronze age Mycenaean trading colony five centuries before Homer. Our afternoon ends in the Roman amphitheater of Pozzuoli. The third largest amphitheater built by the Romans, and one of the most intact, it often showcased plays that harked back to the legendary stories of Homer. Overnight in Miseno, in the heart of the legends.

A slower, sun-warmed day in the land of myth. With a local artisan we take a hands-on ancient-ceramics course, shaping clay vessels in the manner of the first Mycenaeans and the Greeks who followed them — turning everything we have heard about into something we make with our own hands. We pair it with a Phlegraean wine tasting drawn from the volcanic soil of these fields. Miseno itself is a legendary country: the burial cape of Misenus the trumpeter, and the home port of Pliny the Elder, admiral of the Roman fleet, who launched from here on his doomed rescue mission to Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD. Overnight in Miseno.

This morning we head into Naples — Neapolis, the “new city” of the Greeks. We tell the story of the siren Parthenope, whose body the legend says washed ashore to found the city, and we walk the ancient Greco-Roman streets that still run beneath the modern town. At the National Archaeological Museum (MANN) we stand among the greatest Homeric treasures of the ancient world — and hear the story of Nestor's Cup, the 8th-century BCE drinking cup from nearby Pithekoussai, inscribed with the oldest Greek joke about a vessel out of the Iliad. We close the Italian half of our odyssey with a farewell feast at the Pizzeria e Trattoria Purgatorio — a name that keeps our buried theme alive to the last — in the city that gave pizza to the world. Overnight in Miseno.

This morning we transfer to Naples airport and fly the route of the returning hero — Naples to Athens, and on to Kefalonia, the green heart of the Ionian kingdom that Odysseus ruled. We arrive in the island capital of Argostoli in the late afternoon and gather for a welcome dinner on the main square, a glass of local Robola in hand, having officially reached the shores the whole journey was sailing toward. Overnight in Argostoli.

After breakfast we set out among the island's Bronze Age and Homeric roots. Kefalonia is one of the great buried landscapes of the Ionian — an island honeycombed with Mycenaean cemeteries and chamber tombs, its dark earth still giving up grave goods and gold, so that our buried theme runs deeper here than anywhere. We walk directly among the rock-cut chamber tombs of the Mycenaean necropolis of Mazarakata, dating to around 1300 BCE, and stand before the Cyclopean Walls of ancient Krani — defensive blocks so impossibly massive that the ancients believed only a Cyclops could have moved them. Some even hold that Odysseus himself lies buried on Kefalonia — one of the many heroes said to rest beneath this island, keeping our buried theme alive on Greek soil — and we tell the story of the tombs and excavations that have set scholars arguing over exactly that. Back in Argostoli we stroll the marble Lithostroto promenade and cross the historic De Bosset Bridge, keeping an eye on the clear water for the loggerhead sea turtles that glide through the harbor. Overnight in Argostoli.

We rise early and cross the island to the port of Sami, then take the morning ferry over a sparkling strait to Ithaca itself — the hero's own island. We climb through high, wild mountain terrain to the archaeological site many excavators believe to be the palace of Odysseus, the legendary School of Homer, then descend to the beautifully enclosed harbor town of Vathy for lunch on the water and a visit to its little Archaeological Museum, before the late-afternoon ferry carries us back across to Kefalonia. Overnight in Argostoli.

A gentler final day. After breakfast we visit the extraordinary Melissani Cave Lake, a flooded underground cavern where boatmen row us across vivid blue water lit by a shaft of sun through the collapsed ceiling — or we take our ease on the golden, pine-backed sands near Argostoli, a copy of The Odyssey in hand. This evening we gather for a farewell dinner, raising a last glass to a journey that began in the Eternal City and ended in the homeland of the world's most famous traveler. Overnight in Argostoli.

After a final morning stroll along the Argostoli pier, we transfer to Kefalonia International Airport for the flight home, the odyssey complete.