The bridge

The stone bridge of Arta crosses the Arachthos at the western edge of the town. It is 145 metres long, less than four metres wide, and carried on four semicircular arches of noticeably different sizes. Its foundations suggest a crossing stood here in classical times; the bridge you see took its final form around 1612.

It is the most famous bridge in Greece, and not because of its engineering. A folk song tells that whatever the builders raised by day fell down at night, and that the bridge only stood after the master builder's wife was walled into its foundations. The song is taught in Greek schools, and its opening line — all day they built it, at night it fell down — has become a common expression for a job that never finishes.

In 1881, when Arta was handed to Greece, this bridge became the frontier between the Greek state and the Ottoman Empire.

The capital of the Despotate

After the Fourth Crusade destroyed Byzantium in 1204, a Greek state survived in Epirus, and Arta was its capital. Its rulers built, and much of what they built is still standing.

Panagia Parigoritissa dominates the town: a thirteenth-century church on the Peranthi slope, founded by Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas and his wife Anna Palaiologina Kantakouzene. From the outside it looks like a palace rather than a church, and inside, its dome is carried on a system of columns stacked one above another that has no parallel in Greek architecture.

Around it are more: Agios Vasileios tis Agoras, a small late-fourteenth-century church covered in patterned brickwork; the Monastery of Kato Panagia, built by Michael II and still lived in by nuns; the Red Church at Vourgareli, named for the brick that decorates it; and Panagia Vlachernon at Vlacherna, across the river, founded at the end of the eleventh century and rebuilt by Michael II.

The Castle of Arta, also thirteenth-century, stands above the river on the site of the ancient acropolis.

Ambracia

Under the modern town lies the ancient city, which was the capital of King Pyrrhus of Epirus in the third century BC — the man whose costly victories gave English the phrase Pyrrhic victory.

The Archaeological Museum, near the bridge, holds the finds: material from the Palaeolithic period through to Roman times, and a great deal from Ambracia itself.

The gulf

The Ambracian Gulf covers about 405 square kilometres and connects to the Ionian Sea through a channel three kilometres long and only a few hundred metres wide. That narrow opening is what makes it what it is: the water inside is brackish, warm in summer, and extraordinarily productive.

The Arachthos and the Louros rivers empty into its northern end and have built a wetland of twenty lagoons, reedbeds, salt marsh and riverside forest.

The northern lagoons were protected under the Ramsar convention in 1975, and the whole gulf became a national park in 2008.

The dolphins

The gulf holds a resident population of around a hundred and fifty bottlenose dolphins — one of the highest densities anywhere in the Mediterranean. They do not leave, and they do not mix much with populations outside.

Loggerhead turtles come in to feed. Around three hundred bird species have been recorded in the lagoons, and the Dalmatian pelican, a globally threatened bird, is here all year.

Boat trips run out to look for the dolphins, though nobody can promise them.

The mountains

North and east of the plain, the Tzoumerka rise steeply as part of the Pindus range. This is a national park of gorges, waterfalls, stone bridges and fir forest, and the Arachthos runs down through it before it reaches the plain.

Koronisia is the one to see. It sits on an islet in the lagoons, reached by a long causeway across the water, with a Byzantine church and a few tavernas. Herons stand in the shallows on both sides of the road.

Kommeno, Salaora and Kopraina are the other settlements on the gulf. Kopraina was built in 1896 as the first port of free Epirus, at a time when Arta was Greek and Preveza was still Ottoman, and it worked until 1945.

In the mountains, Vourgareli is the largest village, with the Red Church nearby, and Theodoriana and Athamanio sit higher up among fir woods and waterfalls.

The Arachthos is one of the better rivers in Greece for rafting and kayaking, and the sections through the Tzoumerka gorges are run commercially through the spring and early summer.

Dolphin-watching cruises leave from the harbours on the gulf.

The Tzoumerka National Park has marked paths, and the old stone bridges are the usual objective.

The gulf produces two things people travel for: Ambracian shrimp, small and sweet and usually eaten simply, and avgotaracho, salted and waxed grey mullet roe, which is sometimes called Greek caviar. Both come from the lagoons.

The plain around Arta is planted with oranges, and the fruit is used for spoon sweets, marmalade and liqueur.

Epirus is dairy country, so expect good feta and hard sheep's cheeses, pies with hand-rolled pastry, and kontosouvli — pork on a long spit, cooked slowly.