Things to do in Parga

Parga is on the mainland coast of Epirus, opposite Paxos, and everybody says the same thing about it: it looks like an Ionian island town. That is not a coincidence. It was Venetian, then briefly British, and it was administered with the islands rather than with the mainland behind it. Knowing that turns the town from a pretty anomaly into a legible one.

The town, and the castle above it. Pastel houses in tiers around a small bay, a Venetian castle on the headland above, and stepped lanes running down to a waterfront of tavernas. The castle walk is short, free and the best thing in the town, which is a rare combination. The lanes below it are pedestrian and pleasant, and thoroughly geared to visitors, which is worth saying plainly rather than pretending otherwise.

The second fort, on the opposite hill. Above the town stands the ruin of another fortress, built by Ali Pasha of Ioannina. Two forts facing each other across one small bay, one Venetian and one Ottoman, is the whole contested history of this coast in a single view.

The Acheron, which is the reason to have a car. Half an hour inland runs the river the ancients believed flowed into the underworld. The springs at Glyki are icy and clear, and people wade upstream through the gorge. That is a genuinely unusual thing to do with an afternoon: you are walking up a river that classical writers treated as a boundary of the world.

The Nekromanteion, near the Acheron mouth. The ancient oracle of the dead. It pairs with the river rather than standing alone, and doing both in one day is how the place makes sense.

Paxos and Antipaxos, a day by boat. Out for the blue caves and the water. Parga is a base as much as a destination, and this is the trip most visitors build a day around. Paxos is the island itself.

How Parga actually works as a trip. Three nights, which covers a Paxos day, an Acheron day and the town. That is the honest shape: two excursions and one town, rather than a week of one place. The nearest airport is Preveza, about an hour south, and Corfu is close by ferry and road via Igoumenitsa.

Our Parga guide has the practicalities, the beaches are unusually good for a town this size, and where to stay covers the bases.