Where to stay in Patras

Most people who sleep in Patras do it because a boat to Italy leaves in the morning. That is a perfectly good reason and it is also the wrong frame, because the city repays a night more than the ferry schedule suggests. Either way the geography makes the choice easy: the centre is laid out on a grid rising from the port, so you are choosing how far up the slope you want to be.

Near the port, if the ferry is the point. Ferries run to Ancona, Bari, Venice and Brindisi, and if you are driving onto one at an awkward hour, proximity beats atmosphere. It is the honest recommendation for a one-night stop with a boat at the end of it.

In the grid, under the arcades, if you have an evening. The city’s distinguishing feature is long covered colonnades along the main streets, which make it walkable in both sun and rain. Staying in the middle of that puts the evening on your doorstep and is the version of Patras people are surprised by.

Higher up, toward the castle. Above the centre stands the castle, Byzantine on Roman foundations, with a park inside the walls and the whole gulf below, reached from the centre by the long Agiou Nikolaou stair. Sleeping up that way trades convenience for the view and the climb, and the stair is a small event rather than a chore.

The one week to plan around. Patras Carnival is the largest in Greece and among the larger ones in Europe, running through January and February, and it is the one time of year rooms are hard to find. It is genuinely a city-wide event rather than a show for visitors, so it is worth either aiming at or avoiding deliberately.

Getting here, and the detail most planning gets wrong. The Athens motorway takes about two and a half hours. There is a suburban rail line but no through train from Athens. If your plan assumed a train from the capital, check it before anything else.

What a night here can include. Agios Andreas at the western end of the front, one of the largest churches in the Balkans; the arcades; the castle; and the Rio-Antirrio bridge just north, one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world, which you will cross anyway if you are driving on to Epirus. Kalavryta and its rack railway, the wineries of Nemea and Olympia are all within reach if the night becomes two.

We name no hotel on this page. Properties in a port city change hands, and the site’s venue standard needs two independent platforms and a review floor this listing does not verify. What lasts is the grid and the slope. Our Patras guide has the practicalities and things to do covers the arcades, the castle and the carnival.