Athens Tickets and Tours | GetExperience.com

Marathon is a plain on the northeast coast of Attica, an hour from Athens. In 490 BC an Athenian army met a much larger Persian force here and beat it. The battle is the only reason anyone comes.

Herodotus counts a hundred and ninety-two Athenian dead. They were burned and buried on the field under a mound fifty metres across. A grass hill in a quiet field beats any monument.

The myth about the distance

The runner who carried the news to Athens and dropped dead gave the race its name. He did not give it its length. The 42.195 kilometres were fixed at the 1908 London Olympics and standardised in 1921.

The 1896 course from here to Athens ran about forty kilometres. The modern race still starts on the plain and ends in the Panathenaic Stadium. That is in November.

What is actually on the ground

Not much, and that is the point. Marathon tours run as a half day, and the sites are scattered across farmland.

• The Soros. The burial mound of the Athenian dead, alone in a field.
• The tomb of the Plataeans. A second mound at Vrana, for the allies.
• The museum. Small, at Vrana, holding the finds from the field.
• Rhamnous. A fortified coastal deme up the shore, with a sanctuary of Nemesis.
• The dam. Finished in 1929, faced in Pentelic marble, and Athens' water for decades.
• Schinias. Pine forest, a long beach, and the 2004 Olympic rowing course.

Practical

• Shade. There is almost none. Morning is the sensible slot in summer.
• Tickets and hours. One modest fee covers mound and museum. The museum keeps shorter winter hours and shuts some weekdays.
• Getting there. An hour by car, longer on the KTEL bus from Mavromateon. A car makes the scattered sites workable.
• Food. Nothing on the sites. The tavernas are down at the beach.
• Race day. The road shuts and every bed within reach is taken.
• Pairing. Half days add Rhamnous or the lake. Full days swing north to Thermopylae.