Koroni in White: A Curious Corner of the Peloponnese

Places & Traces

May 9

As I touched the first finger of the Peloponnese, the town of Koroni revealed itself as a charming oddity—roof cats, lantern gnomes, alternative shopfronts and streets seemingly hurriedly whitewashed. A sleepy, creative town that shines quietly at sunset.

As I explored the first finger of the Peloponnese—from the left—Koroni stood out instantly. Southeast and serene, it’s a place that seems both forgotten and freshly curated, like someone misplaced time while repainting. Literally. White paint had been splashed and smeared along the paths and alleys with such gusto that it looked less like decoration and more like a fast-forward cleaning ritual. Marking, bordering—hiding what? Or simply brightening everything in a single brushstroke?

But oddities were Koroni’s charm.

A cat strutted across a rooftop like it owned the skyline. Down at street level, a dwarf in a yellow lantern grinned with his pipe, as if in on the joke. A bicycle was nailed to a wall. Book corners popped up in alleyways, tucked between pots and painted walls, as if reading were an impulse as natural as breathing. Small shops spilled into the cobblestones—curated, creative, messy, lived-in. You felt that people here actually made things, fixed things, thought in shapes and textures.

The marina—small, but not without pride—stretched into the sea like punctuation. But it wasn’t the harbor that left the impression. It was everything else. The football towel in a courtyard, the red-painted shutters paired with flowerpots, the graffiti mural of Nikitaras under a blue-and-white flag. Someone here had humor, someone else defiance, someone else had painted a whole village floor.