Bourtzi: The Island Fortress In Nafplio Harbour

Bourtzi is the small fortified islet that sits in the harbour of Nafplio, the coastal town in the Argolid on the Peloponnese of mainland Greece that served as the capital of Greece from 1827 to 1834. The Ministry of Culture's listing gives its 2026 admission as 7 euro full and 5 euro reduced, with access by boat for a fee, and the Bourtzi site's own history page dates its construction to June 1471. This guide sets out what the primary sources actually say: the hours by season, the boat access, the fortress's long use as defender, residence and even hotel, and how a visit fits into a stay that takes in Palamidi Fortress, Akronafplia and the Old Town.

What Is Bourtzi In Nafplio?

Bourtzi is a small sea fortress standing on its own islet in the harbour of Nafplio, begun in June 1471 to designs by the Venetian architect Antonio Gambello, and open to visitors today by boat with a 7 euro full ticket. The Ministry of Culture's listing treats it as a state monument on the same footing as the town's other fortresses, and the Bourtzi site's own history page states that works were surveyed by Niccolo Brancaleone. It is not a museum in the conventional sense and not a ruined shell either: it is a compact defensive work whose low walls and central tower read clearly from the waterfront, and whose whole point is the water around it.

The name itself is the generic Ottoman term for a coastal tower, and the islet guards the entrance to Nafplio's harbour directly below the old acropolis of Akronafplia. From Syntagma Square the walk to the waterfront is short and flat, and the fortress is the first thing the eye finds on the sea. Every angle of the harbour, from the Land Gate to the harbour and waterfront, frames it.

Its military logic was simple. Together with the Five Brothers Bastion on the shore it could chain off the harbour entrance, making a run into the port under fire a costly proposition. The cannon that mattered sat low, almost at the waterline, so the islet never needed the height of Palamidi Fortress towering 216 m above the Old Town.

What follows is everything the sources attach to this one small monument: its building history, its strange later life, its current ticket and hours, and the practical question of how you actually get onto the islet.

Can You Visit Bourtzi, And What Does It Cost?

Yes: Bourtzi is open to visitors, and the Ministry of Culture's listing gives the 2026 ticket as 7 euro full and 5 euro reduced, with access by boat from Nafplio harbour for a separate fee paid at the jetty. The fortress keeps its own seasonal clock, running from 09:00 to 21:00 daily in July and August, to 20:00 in September, to 18:00 in April and May, and to 17:00 in November and December, with October split between weekday and weekend closing times. It closes on 1 January, Easter Sunday and 25 December.

The boat fare is a separate matter from the entrance ticket: the crossing is run privately from the harbour, and no fare figure appears in the official listing, so check at the jetty before boarding. Budget for the two costs separately, the crossing and the ticket, and treat the free-admission days below as applying to the ticket only.

The full seasonal hours, from the Ministry of Culture's own page:

State monuments in Greece share a national calendar of free-admission days, and Bourtzi is on it. Entry is free on 6 March, 18 April, 18 May, the last weekend of September, 28 October, and every first and third Sunday from November to March. If your dates line up with one of these, the ticket costs nothing and only the boat fare applies.

A practical note on pacing: the islet is small, and a visit is measured in a look around the walls, the view back at the town, and the crossing itself. Pair it with the same morning's wander through the Old Town rather than treating it as a destination on its own. The Nafplion City Walking Tour is one way to combine both, since a guided walk of the town pairs naturally with a Bourtzi boat trip.

The other pairing worth making is with the water itself. Bourtzi sits in the middle of the Argolic Gulf's northern shore, and the operators who work this coast run everything from short harbour crossings to full-day island runs. The selection below is drawn from the site's roster of reviewed trips.

For readers planning the wider Argolid circuit, the companion pages on things to do in Nafplio and on Mycenae and Epidaurus tours cover the inland half of the equation.

How Do You Get To The Bourtzi Islet?

Access to Bourtzi is by boat only: small craft run the short crossing from the Nafplio harbour front, the fare is set by the boat operator rather than the Ministry, and no official fare figure exists, so confirm the price at the jetty before boarding. The crossing is the visit in a sense: the islet has no bridge, no causeway and no road, and the Ministry of Culture's listing describes access in exactly those terms, by boat for a fee. Nothing in the official material names a timetable, so in the shoulder months ask at the harbour rather than assuming a fixed schedule.

The boarding point sits on the harbour front below the Old Town, a short flat walk from Syntagma Square and the tourist kiosk on Bouboulinas Street that the municipality lists as its information point. Cruise passengers should note that the landing point for any tender or shore boat is confirmed with the cruise line, not assumed.

If a full day on the water appeals more than a ten-minute crossing, the island day trips are the natural upgrade. A Hydra day trip from Nafplio with swimming is the roster's island option, and the button below shows live availability without commitment.

Check availability

One correction worth a single sentence: no scheduled public ferry runs from Nafplio or Tolo to Hydra or Spetses, and older guides that say otherwise are out of date; the islands are reached by seasonal day cruise or from another port, per the cruise operators' own schedules, which you should confirm before you go. That is the only ferry fact that matters on this page, and it does not affect the Bourtzi crossing at all, which is a harbour shuttle rather than a route.

Who Built Bourtzi, And When?

Construction of Bourtzi began in June 1471 to designs by the Venetian architect Antonio Gambello, with the works surveyed by Niccolo Brancaleone, according to the fortress's own history page, making it the town's harbour defence long before Palamidi Fortress rose above Nafplio. The first Venetian period in Nafplio ran from 1389 to 1540, and the islet tower was its harbour defence, built while the Ottomans held the surrounding seas and the town needed its entrance closed to raiders.

The fortress then lived through every turn of the town's later rule. Nafplio passed to the Ottomans in 1540, back to Venice in the second Venetian period from 1686 to 1715, when Palamidi Fortress was raised above the town, and finally to the Ottomans again in 1715 until the Greek capture of 1822. Bourtzi was repaired and rearmed across these changes rather than rebuilt, which is why its low profile still reads as a late medieval sea fort rather than a later bastion.

After Greek independence its role turned strange and domestic. The Bourtzi site's own history page records that the islet later housed the residence of the state executioners, an arrangement tied to executions at Palamidi, and then, in the early 1930s, the Greek tourism organisation leased it as a 14-room hotel with a restaurant. A fortress that once chained the harbour entrance ended the era taking bookings.

Today the islet is back to being a monument, administered as a state site. The layers are visible in one short circuit: Venetian stonework at the waterline, the rebuilt central mass, and the hotel fittings that the listing's photographs show inside.

What Will You Actually See On The Islet?

The visitor circuit of Bourtzi is short: the landing point, the low seaward walls built to fire along the water, the central tower block that served as garrison quarters and later hotel, and the view back across the harbour to Akronafplia and the Old Town. The Ministry's listing describes a compact monument, and the islet's geometry, a narrow rock barely wide enough for the fortress itself, means there is no lawn, no cafe inside the walls and no long promenade. What there is, in abundance, is perspective.

From the seaward side the fortress shows its working face: gun loops close to the water, where a cannon could rake a hull trying to slip past. From the landward side the whole town assembles itself in one frame, the Old Town climbing to the walls of Akronafplia, the stub of the Akronafplia headland, and above everything the ramparts of Palamidi Fortress. Photographers get the shot that the town's postcards are built on.

Inside, the hotel period left its traces. The tourism organisation's 14-room conversion means rooms, stairways and service spaces adapted for guests, and the listing treats these as part of the monument's story rather than stripping them back. Walk it slowly; the whole circuit is minutes, not hours, and the value is in the two outlooks, sea and town, that no shore position can give.

Two practical cautions from the site's own material. The islet's paths and steps are historic and uneven in places, and no access claim of any kind is made on this site: anyone with mobility questions should ask at the boat jetty before paying for the crossing. And the fortress closes on the three calendar dates listed above, so a winter visit should double-check the day.

How Does Bourtzi Fit Into A Day In Nafplio?

Bourtzi works best as the punctuation mark of a harbour morning: the crossing and circuit fit inside an hour, so the natural plan is the Old Town first, Bourtzi second, and the rest of the day given to Palamidi Fortress or a boat trip on the Argolic Gulf. The town's core sights cluster within a short walk of one another, Syntagma Square at the centre, the Archaeological Museum in the old arsenal on its north side, and the fortress islet visible from all of it.

A sample shape for one full day, using only the openings and drive times in this site's facts:

With a second day, the itinerary widens fast. Mycenae is about a 32-minute drive from Syntagma Square and the Epidaurus theatre about 41 minutes, both 20 euro full and 10 euro reduced in 2026, and a guided run to both is the classic Argolid pairing. The two days in Nafplio itinerary lays out the full sequence, and the one day in Nafplio page compresses it for short stays.

The trio of reviewed trips below covers the three directions a Nafplio visit can take from the harbour: out to an island, inland to the ruins, or on foot through the town itself.

Is Bourtzi Nafplio's Most Photographed Sight?

Editorially, yes by position: Bourtzi appears in the frame of every waterfront photograph taken in Nafplio, because the islet sits in the sightline of the entire harbour front, from the Land Gate at one end to the Nafplio lighthouse at the other. No ranking of photographs exists as a counted fact, and this site prints none, but the geometry is not in dispute: the fortress is in the middle of the town's one great water view, and the town wraps around it in an arc.

The practical version of that fact is about light and hour. The fortress faces the town, so the classic shot is taken from the shore in the later part of day, when the sun is behind the photographer and the islet is lit. In the morning the islet stands against the light, which suits silhouettes and long exposures over calm water more than postcard colour. The promenade by the Nafplio lighthouse gives the fullest run of that sightline.

For a different angle entirely, the water itself is the platform. The sea kayak and sailing options in the site's roster approach the islet from outside the harbour, which reverses the view: the fortress in the foreground and the whole town stacked above it. The selection below shows what is bookable.

Back on land, the second viewpoint worth walking for is the Arvanitia side, where the promenade below Akronafplia looks back at the harbour from the south, the fortress and the town in one frame with the open gulf beyond.

What About The Town Around The Harbour?

The harbour that Bourtzi guards is the working centre of Nafplio: the Old Town rises behind it, Syntagma Square sits a few minutes inland, and the whole arc from the Land Gate to Akronafplia is walkable without ever crossing a road of consequence. The town of about 14,500 residents, in a municipality of about 32,600, lives at a human scale, and the fortress islet is the fixed point around which the waterfront, the moorings and the evening promenade all arrange themselves.

The monuments closest to the jetty repay the short detours. The Church of Agios Spyridon stands just off the square, the church outside which Governor Kapodistrias was assassinated in September 1831. The First Parliament building, the Vouleftiko, hosted the first Greek parliament sessions from 1825. And the Kolokotronis statue marks the man who led the 1822 capture of Palamidi.

For orientation, the climate is worth one paragraph of planning. The HNMS Argos station, 1980 to 2010, the nearest official station about 10 km north-west and inland, records mean daily highs of 26.5 C in May, 31.4 C in June and 34.0 C in July, with rainfall at its monthly low of 8.9 mm in June and 9.1 mm in July. A July crossing to Bourtzi is a hot one, and the fortress's 09:00 to 21:00 summer hours exist precisely so the visit can move to the evening.

The guided options that keep you in town, on the water or on the road, gathered once more:

And for the fullest day on the water from this harbour:

Common Questions About Bourtzi In Nafplio

Readers planning the wider stay can start from the site's own Nafplio Travel Guide homepage, or from the dedicated pages on the harbour and waterfront and the Old Town that the fortress watches over. For the question of whether Nafplio itself, town and islet together, is an island, the answer is on the is Nafplio an island page: it is a mainland town on the Argolic Gulf, and Bourtzi is the islet in its harbour.