Ancient Gortys

Built on the banks of the Lousios River, in an amazing natural landscape, this ancient temple dedicated to the Greek God of Medicine Asclepius, was a place of healing and spiritual upliftment.

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Ancient Gortys is on the banks of the Lousios River, in an amazing natural landscape. In ancient times, at this site there was a famous Asklepion (a temple dedicated to the  Greek God of Medicine Asclepius). It was a place of healing and spiritual upliftment, and you would not have to be too fanciful to feel that some essence of that past remains here today. Indeed, if you stand quietly among the ruins, you can almost hear the echo of history blending in with the sounds of nature.

In ancient times, people from all over Greece came here to visit the Asklepion, seeking to heal both body and mind. The temple’s reputation spread far and wide, so much so that  in 335 BC Alexander the Great came here to make a sacrifice to the god Asclepius and to dedicate his breastplate and spear to him. The thermal baths at the site are some of the most important yet found from the ancient world, and are startlingly modern in some ways, with under floor heating provided by a system of hypocausts. We know from Pausanias, the 2nd century traveller and writer, that there were statues of Asclepius and Hygieia, the goddess of health, in the temple and that they were the work of the famous sculptor Scopas. Pausanias also tells us that the statue showed Asclepius as a teenager, seated on a throne and holding his staff in his left hand. A snake was coiled round the staff, a symbol still used to this day by chemists and medics.

We don’t know exactly when Gortys was founded, but our font of all knowledge, Pausanias, described it as one of the most ancient cities in Arcadia and it is thought to have been founded between the Late Helladic Era and the Geometric Times - so between 1700 BC and 750 BC.  It seems to have declined after the city of Megalopolis was founded in 368 BC. It lost its independence at this time and a large part of the population moved to the new city. Gortys seems to have been permanently destroyed around the 12th century AD by the Goths.

The remains of ancient Gortys were discovered in 1805 by the English traveller William Leake and these were then excavated by the French Archaeological School. You can see the central areas of the baths and the auxiliary rooms, parts of the temple of Asclepius and the fortifications of the city.

The road from Elleniko to Atsicholo road passes beside the archaeological site, or if you are staying in Dimitsana and feeling energetic there is a trail running between the village and the site.

Did you know that

According to some scholars, ancient Gortys is connected to Gortyna in Crete – In fact Plato described it as a "colony of the Peloponnese".

At the archaeological site you can also see the Kokori bridge, an old water mill and the Byzantine church of Agios Andreas which is built on top of an ancient temple.

Ancient Gortys is the starting point or end point for walking routes in the Lousios gorge.

Location

Find the destination on the interactive map below.