I SAW the news on a sunny spring day, traipsing through ruins where the Oracle held court, in a place once deemed the center of the Earth. The report was dated by a couple of thousand years, carved in ancient Greek letters on a marble slab, filled with passages of the era's noteworthy events. It was also an example of how the abundant remnants of the ancients still have relevance here in Greece, where vibrant modern life coexists casually with the past. Our journey included stops in the Bronze Age, the Golden Age, the eras of the Roman occupation and Byzantine influence, with some of the wonders of the ancient world. Traveling with my family on an organized tour, we started in Athens, where a third of the Greek population lives and works. The city spreads out below the Acropolis, which glows under lights by night for an awe-inspiring view from virtually anywhere in the city. We joined a crowd on the same stone pathway once traversed by throngs as part of an annual rite, known as the Panathenaic procession, to the site of the grandest of temples around 500 B.C. We clambered past the ruins of the formal entrance, the Propylaia, and stood before the remains of the Parthenon, where a huge statue of Athena once stood. I was struck by how much of the edifice is still intact, although restoration is ongoing. Nearby and also remarkably intact is the Erechtheion, famous for massive statues of women used as supporting pillars. Below the walls is Theatre of Herod Atticus, dating to C.E. 161 but now restored and in use. In Delphi, we were again following the footsteps of the ancients on the Sacred Way on the slopes of Mount Parnassos. The upward path brought us past the ruins of the temple of Apollo, dating back several hundred years B.C., and the excavated site of the Oracle, whose ambiguous incantations came at a price in sacrifices and donations. Still intact is the conical stone marking the mythological center of the Earth. We passed the slab that served as a supporting wall and also a newspaper of the day, and on to a 2,500-year-old theater carved into the hillside. Above was a newer stadium, built by the Romans during their occupation and still remarkably intact. Like many excavated sites, this was cordoned off. But our next stop, Olympia, was not. The route to the site of the first Olympics presented a constant contrast between the old and modern: A space-age cable-stay bridge carried us to Peloponnese, a peninsula on the other side of the canal at Corinth. At the foot of the bridge was a well-preserved fort dating to the days of the Crusades. Walking past the site of the Palestra in Olympia, a visitor can imagine contestants from the early games — they started here in 776 B.C. — practicing boxing and wrestling. In the center of what was an Olympic village are the remains of yet another Temple of Zeus, its once-grand columns now scattered about the base. This is also the site of another ancient wonder, where the statue of Zeus once stood. We stood at the site of the ritual lighting of the Olympic flame, which even today is lit in the ancient way, using the sun's rays and a mirror, and then under the vaulted arch leading to the stadium, which even by the ancients' standards is quite simple. Moving even farther back in time, to the 1,700-1,100 B.C. late Bronze Age, we were guided by our driver, Pericles, eastward through Arkadian Mountain passes to Mycenae. While much of its fortified palace atop a citadel lies in ruins, some of its features remain intact, such as the 46-foot-thick stone wall to warn off invaders. They are so immense that even Greeks in later centuries believed they must have built by giants; that's why they are known as “Cyclopean” walls. Visitors can walk to a corner of the citadel and enter a dark opening where 99 steps lead to a cistern that provided water to the hilltop city. Bring a flashlight and watch your step. A visit to Greece is incomplete without touring at least some of the islands. From Piraeus, we sailed to Mykonos, in the Aegean's Cyclades islands. Rough April seas prevented us from going ashore. But the seas had calmed by the time we berthed in Rhodes. Here, the Colossus of Rhodes overlooked the entry of ancient visitors until it was claimed by an earthquake in 227 B.C. While the Colossus is gone, the castle built by the Knights of St. John during the Crusades retains much of its original magnificence. Visitors today roam the inner side of the ramparts, where scores of shops and restaurants line the meandering walkways.
