MARATHON BEACH
Long sandy beach with tavernas, sun loungers and parasols, where the famous battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC.
It was on this 2 km-long beach (Παραλία Μαραθώνα/Paralia Marathona) that one of history's most famous confrontations took place, the Battle of Marathon, in August or September 490 BC. The 600-odd ships of the Persian expeditionary force led by Darius the Great were about to land between 20,000 and 100,000 men, when they were attacked by a small Greek army made up of some 9,000 Athenian hoplites commanded by Miltiades and a thousand soldiers from the city of Plataea, near Thebes. Taking advantage of the surprise effect and the position of the sun, which blinded their opponents, the Greeks cut to pieces the first detachments that landed on the sand. The rest of the Persian troops set foot on the beach of Schinias, to the north-east. But in view of the losses suffered (6,400 dead compared with just 203 for the Greeks), Darius ordered a withdrawal. A historic decision that allowed the cities of Balkan Greece to remain free. At the site of the battle, there are a few deckchairs and umbrellas in front of the restaurants (Isidora, Faros, Leonidas...). In the southern part, at Brexiza, stand the ruins of the "Egyptian" sanctuary founded in the 2nd century by Herod Atticus. And to the north-west, behind the other long sandy beach of Marathon Bay, lies the Schinias Olympic Center, a stretch of water created for the rowing and canoeing races of the 2004 Olympic Games, and the Schinias-Marathon protected area, a rich wetland of 14 km2.
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