There is a way of travelling for archaeology that means going to the sites and another that means going to the objects. The first is the usual one and the second is almost never considered, even though in many places it teaches more. Here the choice is especially clear, because the two are separated by forty kilometres of road.
01 How it fits you
The capital has no major site. What it has is the museum where the finds from sites all across the island have been concentrated, arranged chronologically and in a building you can walk end to end in one long morning. For a specific kind of traveller, that is worth more than any ruin.
02 Why everything is here
The reason is administrative and fairly common in small countries: when the island's antiquities service was organised, it was decided to bring together in the capital whatever was excavated anywhere in the territory. The result is that a modest-sized museum holds an entire country's archaeological sequence, without gaps.
And there is one display that justifies the visit on its own: an enormous group of terracotta figures, hundreds of them, found together at a single site and exhibited as they appeared, tiered and sorted by size. It is not a selection of the best: it is the whole group, and seeing it that way communicates something a case with five chosen pieces cannot.
03 What it will cost you
The first friction is that the capital does not stretch much further. The walls, the old town and the museum are well covered in two days; the third is already hard to fill. It is a destination that works as the first stop of a trip around the island, not as a whole trip, and it is worth planning it that way from the start.
The second is the car. The important sites are spread along the coast, and without your own vehicle chaining them from here is slow and expensive. If the plan is museum plus sites, hiring a car from day one is practically obligatory, and you have to reckon with driving on the left.
The third is the calendar, and it is harsh. Between June and August the average high hovers around 37 degrees and the city has no nearby sea to cool it. The museum is just as good, but the old town and the walls, which are covered outdoors, stop being a reasonable plan after ten in the morning.
04 How I would build these days
Two days in April. The first, the museum first thing and unhurried: a good three hours, without trying to see everything, stopping at the terracotta group and the Roman sculpture room. In the afternoon, the old town on foot, which is small and needs no plan.
The second day, the moat and the walls on foot wherever the route is open, looking up at the bastions from below; and a free afternoon to go back to the museum if the first day fell short, which it usually does. From the third day, car and coast: the trip continues elsewhere.
05 The verdict
If you travel for archaeology and are going to tour the island, starting here is the best decision you can make and it costs practically nothing: two cheap, queue-free days with a collection that mentally orders everything you are going to see afterwards. Few small national museums repay the hour so well.
If you come looking for monumental ruins, a beach or a capital with a lot of programme, this is not your place and two days will drag. The deciding question is simple: are you more interested in the object or in the place where it turned up? If it is the former, this city is the island's obligatory stop. If it is the latter, spend a morning here and carry on to the coast.
Explore this destination
Discover its points of interest, prices, access and everything worth seeing.
Days already sorted
Day-by-day routes for this destination, with stops, timings and what each one costs.
Bernard Gagnon Thimphu for the traveller who accepts that here the trip is priced by the night
Mindia Jalabadze Tbilisi for anyone who travels for wine and wants to see where it comes from
Dmitry G