At over a thousand metres in the mountains of Arcadia, on a rocky shoulder above the gorges of the Neda, stands one of the best preserved temples of ancient Greece, and since the 1980s it has stood under a vast white tent. The Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae was built in the fifth century BC by the people of nearby Phigalia, who dedicated it to Apollo the helper, it is said, for saving them from plague. Ancient writers attributed its design to Iktinos, one of the architects of the Parthenon. It was the first Greek monument in Greece to be listed as a World Heritage Site, in 1986.
The tent is there to protect the temple from weather while restoration continues, and it gives a strange, cathedral like atmosphere inside, with the grey limestone columns rising under the canopy. The temple is unusual in many ways: it faces north, it mixes Doric, Ionic and the earliest known Corinthian column, and its marble frieze, now in the British Museum in London, showed battles of Greeks against Amazons and centaurs.
The setting is the real reward. The mountains here are wild and bare, with oak and holly scrub, and the views stretch to the Ionian Sea on clear days. The air is clean and cool even in summer, and the silence is deep.
The roads to Bassae are some of the finest in the Peloponnese for riding: narrow, twisting and mostly empty, climbing from Andritsaina, a village of stone houses with a famous library, or from the coast at Tholo through Perivolia and Phigalia. Surfaces vary, with patches, gravel and the odd rockfall, and goats wander across. In winter, snow can close the road. Spring and autumn are perfect, and summer afternoons are hot.
Fuel is scarce in the mountains. Andritsaina has very limited services; Megalopoli, twenty two kilometres away, or the coast towns are safer bets. Kopanaki, to the south, is a small town. Bring water and food, and check the temple's opening hours, which can be short in winter.