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Aristotle's Stagira and Xerxes' canal

Two stops from history: the canal a Persian king dug past Nea Roda, and the town where Aristotle was born.

  • 5 km to the canal · 35 to 43 km to Stagira
The neck of the Athos peninsula from the air, the line of Xerxes' canal across it
Photo: Konstantinos Tamateas, CC BY-SA 4.0
The walls of ancient Stagira over a wooded headland, a bay below

Xerxes' canal

Between 483 and 480 BC the Persian king Xerxes had a canal dug across this neck, so his fleet would not round the cape of Athos. Little is left to see: a shallow line across the land between Nea Roda and Tripiti, clearest from the air.

Ancient Stagira

Where Aristotle was born, in 384 BC. The walls and the streets of the old town run over a small headland above the sea, 43 km from Komitsa.

Aristotle Park

A hillside park in the village of Stagira, 35 km away, with Aristotle's statue, a view over the gulf and simple instruments, a sundial, a pendulum and a compass, that show the physics he wrote about.

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Stay next door

Porto Komitsa is on Komitsa beach, near Nea Roda: twenty apartments, one beach.

Next door to Mount Athos