Areopoli's flagstone lanes

Areopoli is the capital of the Mani in everything but administration, and its old quarter is a protected settlement: two or three streets of flagstone, houses built of the same grey limestone as the hills, and carved marble lintels over the doors — sun discs, cypresses, mermaids and dates, cut by masons who worked in the same idiom for two hundred years.

The photographic value is texture and repetition. Work the lanes lengthwise so the arches stack, and use the doorways as ready-made frames — the carving reads best in raking light rather than flat sun. The main square, with its statue of Petros Mavromichalis and the church of the Taxiarches with a relief-covered bell tower, gives the wider, more formal frame.

Late afternoon is the hour. Areopoli is grey stone and needs warm light to come alive; at midday it goes hard and colourless, and in the evening it turns honey-coloured for about forty minutes. The town is a stop on every Mani tour, but the coaches leave by five. It is a lived-in town rather than a museum, so keep doorways clear and ask before shooting into a courtyard.