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“For Nolan’s film they built a life-size trireme and they rented hundreds of sheep – it was, you could say, Homerically expensive,” joked tour guide Stavros Petropoulos as we entered the grand Palace of Nestor-inspired lobby at The Romanos resort in Costa Navarino, part of the Messenia region in the southern Peloponnese.
I’d last visited lush and lesser-visited Messenia a decade earlier, and had fond memories of lazing on blonde beaches and lingering in ancient Mycenaean sites without another soul for company. With Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey hitting screens this week, however, I thought it was time to revisit, lest the “set-jetting” crowd ruin it, just as they did with Skopelos when Mamma Mia! showcased it back in the Noughties.
A sprawling holiday complex where classical heritage meets contemporary design across four luxury hotels, Costa Navarino hosted many of the film’s cast. When I arrived the staff were buzzing from their recent exposure to the stars. “Matt Damon used to jog around the grounds in his shorts,” one staff member told me in awed tones.
The beefed-up Damon stars as Odysseus, the legendary hero whose decade-long journey to return to his home island of Ithaca after the Trojan War forms the plot of Homer’s epic poem. “It’s such a modern story: it’s about temptation, endurance, and nostos – coming home,” enthused Stavros as we set out on Costa Navarino’s new “Exploring the Homeric Landscapes” tour, launched to coincide with the forthcoming film.
Our first stop was the 3,000-year-old Mycenaean Palace of Nestor. This 2,000 sq m site, with its low stone walls, is where Homer’s king of “sandy Pylos” once held court, and is depicted in The Odyssey as a bustling centre of order and authority. But we had it to ourselves, with the silence broken only by the wind’s low whistle and the occasional call of a seagull.
Standing on the deserted hillside listening to the wind’s song and watching waves rippling Navarino Bay’s waters far below, it was easy to get lost in the world of Homer, who wove together the tales once told by Bronze Age travelling poets with Greek traditions of magical transformations, moral lessons and gods interfering in human life. Stavros pointed to the asaminthos, a narrow terracotta bathtub standing near what was once the Queen’s apartments. “Who knows? That might be the very tub where Telemachus [the son of Odysseus] was bathed and anointed with oil,” he whispered.
I couldn’t help wondering whether the magic of this site would survive the onslaught of the selfie-stick-waving hordes that I fear will flock here after the film’s release.
Apart from buzzing flies, we had the excellent archaeological museum in the modern town of Pylos all to ourselves, too. In blissful silence we marvelled at the bulging Bronze Age helmets made from the tusks of wild boar, and pored over clay tablets with their Linear B pictograms, whose code was finally cracked by Michael Ventris, a self-trained British architect, in 1952. “Incredible to think that even for Aristotle, Mycenae was already ancient,” Stavros marvelled.
At dinner that evening at Costa Navarino’s steak restaurant I admired the skill of the chefs in the open kitchen. Enveloped in dense clouds of steam they leapt back and forth with long metal spits, or obeloi – the same that were used in Mycenaean times – spearing the meat and grilling it over an open fire. Odours of rosemary and hot charcoal filled the air as a waiter arrived at my table. “As you can see our favourite street food, souvlaki, was already popular in Homer’s time,” he joked.
Cycling out along sandy paths framed by shifting dunes the next morning, I stopped to watch sandpipers plodding over the surrounding marshes, and admire dazzling pink flamingos as they pecked at crustaceans in the bottle-green waters of Gialova Lagoon.
Further on, I came to Voidokilia Beach. The Omega-shaped band of golden sands surrounding Caribbean-blue waters was in striking contrast to Nestor’s brooding cave overhead, where Nolan filmed Odysseus’s encounter with the Cyclops, who grabbed two of his shipmates, “smashed them like puppies, and ate them raw”. It occurred to me that Homer’s story, with its surfeit of violence and tragedy, war and loss, seemed made for a modern audience.
A gentler tale was told at Costa Navarino’s weaving experience. “Houses would all have had looms like this one. Since ancient times Messenia was known through Greece for having the best weavers,” Eleni Markopoulou of Social Cooperative Mali-Mali Ripesi told me. She slid the weft back and forth, just as Penelope would have done as she waited patiently for her husband Odysseus’s return, weaving a funeral shroud for Laertes by day and secretly undoing her work each night to fend off her 108 suitors.
Fingers nimbly working the shuttle, Eleni explained the meaning of “nostos”. A central theme in The Odyssey, this single word covers the complex set of emotions involved in returning home after many trials and tribulations to an emotional reunion with one’s past, one’s self and others. “Of course it’s the root of the word nostalgia, derived from “nostos” and “algos”, meaning “pain of return”, but nowadays nostos has a gentler meaning – it’s used more in the context of a return to simpler things and reconnecting with the past,” she said.
On my final evening I sat down to Nestor’s Feast, acclaimed chef Nikos Billis’s Odyssey-themed culinary experience. From the rich saffron-and-nettle-infused beef broth starter to a dessert of pungent goat’s cheese with syrupy grape molasses, dishes use only ingredients that would have been available in ancient Greece. A fitting end to my time in Messenia, then, but unlike Homer’s hero, I hoped it wouldn’t take another decade before gracious gods and the winds of fortune brought me back again.
How to do it
Costa Navarino has a range of Odyssey-inspired activities including themed dinners, guided tours, philosophy walks, cookery classes and spa treatments based on ancient rituals. EasyJet has direct flights to Kalamata International Airport from London Gatwick from €101 (£87). Hertz offers car hire from Kalamata Airport from €41 (£35) per day.
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