Delphi

Listen first. Wind moves through the pines above you. Somewhere below, a goat bell sounds faintly in the valley. The path under your feet is pale, worn stone, polished smooth by centuries of sandals and boots. Ahead, broken columns rise against the grey cliffs of Mount Parnassus. This is Delphi. For more than a thousand years, people climbed this same slope with one purpose. They came to ask a question and hear an answer from a god.

The ancient Greeks had a story about why this place mattered. Legend has it that Zeus released two eagles from opposite ends of the world. They flew towards each other and met here, above these cliffs. So Delphi became the centre of the world, its navel. The Greeks called that navel the omphalos, and they marked it with a carved stone. Keep that word in mind. You will meet the stone itself later, in the museum.

Another legend explains whose sanctuary this was. A great serpent called Python once guarded the site. The young god Apollo came here, killed the serpent, and claimed the mountain for himself. That story stayed alive in the name of the priestess who spoke for him. She was called the Pythia. It also gave its name to the Pythian Games, a festival of music and athletics held here in honour of Apollo.

Now look at the path you are walking. This is the Sacred Way. It zigzags up the hillside towards the temple. In ancient times it was not empty like this. Monuments lined both sides — statues, inscribed bases, and small treasury buildings. Greek city-states paid for them to show their wealth and their gratitude to Apollo. Many of those monuments also celebrated victories over other Greek cities. So the road to the oracle was also a long gallery of rivalry and pride.

One building on this path stands out. It is the Treasury of the Athenians, a small marble structure shaped like a temple. What you see today is a reconstruction, put back together by French archaeologists in the early twentieth century, using many of the original blocks. Here is a detail most visitors miss. Its walls are covered in carved inscriptions. Among them are hymns to Apollo, and some carry musical notation. They are among the oldest written pieces of music to survive from the ancient world.

A little further on, look at the long retaining wall to your side. Its stones are not rectangular. They are many-sided blocks, fitted together like a jigsaw, with curving joints. Builders call this polygonal masonry. Look closely at the surface, and you will see that it is crowded with small Greek letters. Many of these inscriptions record the freeing of enslaved people. Their release was registered here, under the protection of the god. It is a quiet, very human record, written straight into the wall.

Above that wall stands the Temple of Apollo. Only its platform and a handful of columns remain. The ruins you see belong to a rebuilding from the fourth century before Christ, after earlier temples were destroyed. Ancient writers said that wise sayings were carved near the entrance. The most famous was "Know thyself." Another was "Nothing in excess." Imagine reading those words before you went inside to ask the god about your future.

So what happened inside? The Pythia sat in an inner chamber of the temple. Visitors put their questions to her, and her answers were passed on, often through priests. Exactly how she reached her trance is still debated. Some ancient writers spoke of vapours rising from the ground. Modern geologists have argued about faults beneath the site. No theory is fully settled. What we know is that her answers carried enormous weight across the Greek world.

Those answers were also famously unclear. The historian Herodotus tells a story about Croesus, a wealthy king of Lydia, in what is now Turkey. Croesus asked whether he should attack the Persians. The oracle said that if he did, he would destroy a great empire. He attacked. The empire he destroyed was his own. Whether every detail is true or not, the story shows how people understood Delphi. The god spoke truth — but the listener had to understand it.

Keep climbing, and you reach the theatre. Its stone seats curve into the hillside, facing out over the whole sanctuary. This is the place to stop and catch your breath. From the upper rows, you see the temple below you, and beyond it the deep valley of the Pleistos river. A grey-green sea of olive trees runs down towards the coast. On a clear day, you may see a sliver of the Gulf of Corinth in the distance.

Higher still, at the top of the site, is the stadium. Athletes raced here during the Pythian Games. The climb is steep, but the long, flat track feels strangely calm after the crowded ruins below. Here is another surprise. Until the late nineteenth century, a village called Kastri sat on top of much of this sanctuary. Its houses had to be moved so that excavation could begin. Modern Delphi, the town you passed through, grew up as its replacement.

Down the road, away from the main site, there are two more places worth your time. The Castalian Spring, where pilgrims purified themselves before visiting the oracle, sits in a cleft in the cliffs. Beyond it is the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, often called Marmaria. There you will find the Tholos, a round building with a few restored columns. It is one of the most photographed views in Greece, and it is gentler and quieter than the main sanctuary.

Finally, the museum. It holds the bronze Charioteer of Delphi, a life-size figure from the fifth century before Christ. Look at his eyes. They are inlaid, and they still seem alive. You will also see the carved omphalos stone and the Naxian Sphinx, a winged creature that once stood high on a column. The museum turns the scattered ruins on the hillside into faces and stories. Seeing it after the site helps everything fall into place.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment wherever you are. Notice the cliffs above, the heat on the stone, the smell of pine and dry earth. People stood here with the same mountain behind them, asking about wars, marriages, harvests and journeys. Their questions were not so different from ours. As you walk back down, listen again to the wind and the distant bells. The oracle is silent now. But the place still makes you stop and think.