Loutropolis Methana

Loutropolis Methana is a thermal spa town on the Methana peninsula, a dormant volcanic promontory jutting into the Saronic Gulf southwest of Athens, where sulphurous and bicarbonated springs fed by the same volcanic system responsible for the peninsula's most recent eruption in 258 BC have been part of the bathing tradition since the Classical period. Epidaurus, accessible by ferry across the Saronic Gulf, is the most important healing sanctuary of the ancient Greek world, its Asklepion theatre of the fourth century BC still performing the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides each summer in an acoustic environment of legendary perfection, connecting theatrical and ritual traditions in a single Classical landscape. Methana's volcanic springs, described by Pausanias and Strabo in antiquity as among the most celebrated in the Greek world, continue to flow into the spa facilities of the small peninsula town in a context that places thermal tradition within a radius of Classical civilisation's most evocative monuments.