JOURNEY TO NOSTOS
Curated Journeys Through The Hellenic World
Journeys · Writing · Podcast · Curated planning
Spain — From the Pillars into the Inner Sea
Weeks 1–3
The threshold of the journey.
From the Pillars of Heracles, the route moves east along Spain’s southern and eastern coasts, where Atlantic fear gives way to Mediterranean rhythm.
Phoenician harbours, Roman shore towns, and early Greek contact zones frame the psychological shift from ocean to inner sea.
This is where the journey begins — but it is not the only place to start.
Includes Gibraltar, Cádiz, Málaga, the eastern Spanish coast, Empúries, and the approach to Massalia.
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France — Massalia and the Western Greek Gate
Week 4
A short section with outsized importance.
Massalia (modern Marseille) stands as the western intelligence node of the Greek world — a harbour built for listening, trading, and learning rather than conquest.
This week explains how Hellenic culture moved by encounter, not domination.
Includes Massalia and the Ligurian hinge toward Italy.
Italy — Magna Graecia and the Tyrant Coast
Weeks 5–7
The densest Hellenic coastline in the western Mediterranean.
Here, Greek settlement becomes architectural, agricultural, and political at scale.
Temples, grids, ports, and hinterlands reveal how cities were planted, sustained, and contested over generations.
This section can be entered anywhere — Sicily, Campania, or southern Italy — without losing coherence.
Includes Naples, Paestum, Calabria, Sicily, Taranto, Metapontum, and the southern Italian coast.
Türkiye — Ionia, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia
Weeks 8–12
The intellectual and urban heart of the Hellenic world.
From the Hellespont and Troy through Ionia and down the Anatolian coast, this section traces the coastline where philosophy, urban planning, and sanctuary networks reach their most legible form.
This is the Mediterranean read slowly, city by city.
Includes Troy, Pergamon, Smyrna, Ephesus, Miletus, Didyma, Halicarnassus, Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia.
The Levant — The Shared Shore
Weeks 13–14
Here the Hellenic world becomes one voice among many.
Greek, Phoenician, and Near Eastern cultures overlap along a coastline shaped by writing, trade, and deep memory.
This section dissolves the idea of a single cultural narrative and replaces it with exchange.
Includes Ugarit, Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, and the approach to Alexandria.
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North Africa — The Long Return West
Weeks 15–20
Often skipped. Essential.
From Alexandria through Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and along the North African coast, the Mediterranean reveals its southern spine.
Greek foundations, Roman coastal power, and Phoenician legacies sit in open dialogue with land, plateau, and desert.
This is a slow, expansive reading of scale.
Includes Alexandria, Cyrene, Leptis Magna, Carthage, Hippo Regius, Tipasa, Algiers, and Oran.
Morocco — Returning to the Pillars
Weeks 21–22
The sea narrows again.
The journey tightens as the route moves along the Rif coast toward Tangier and the strait.
The Pillars of Heracles reappear — no longer as myth alone, but as lived geography.
The circuit closes quietly.
Includes the Rif coast, Tetouan, Tangier, Cap Spartel, Baelo Claudia, and Gibraltar.
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