Piraeus Harbour

This guide to Piraeus Harbour in Athens turns on a gamble the Athenian statesman Themistocles made with a windfall of silver from the mines at Laurion, convincing the city to spend it on two hundred warships based here rather than the shallow bay at Phaleron. It follows that fleet toward the Persian invasion of 480 BC, the Long Walls that later tied this harbor to Athens itself, and the day a Spartan fleet returned to blockade the same water during Athens's war with Sparta. Best explored down by the ferry docks, where ships still leave for the islands every day.