Megara, Ancient city in Attica, Greece
Megara is a town between Athens and Corinth in central Greece, spread across two hills and surrounded by olive groves and low fields. Houses cluster around the two slopes, from which you can overlook the coast and the adjoining plains.
The settlement was founded in early antiquity as a trading point between two seas and controlled important shipping routes during the archaic period. It later sent colonists to Sicily, the Black Sea and the Bosporus before declining in political power.
The name reaches back to the Bronze Age and refers to one of Greece's oldest continuously inhabited settlements, whose residents maintained a strict legal code from early times. Local markets and coffeehouses now dot the center, where traces of different eras appear in wall fragments, churches and public squares.
The old quarter sits on the two hills above the newer neighborhoods and is best explored on foot, though good footwear is useful because of the cobbled streets. Most archaeological remains are scattered across the town center, so a longer walk connects the different points.
The old defensive walls ran for nearly eight kilometers from the center down to the coast and secured access to both harbors. Today scattered rows of stone trace this route and give a sense of the military planning of the period.
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