Upon landing, most visitors go immediately to Athens, but no one should fail to return once and again to Piræus in order to see the extant remains of the ship-houses; of the gateways and walls to the northwest of the Great Harbour; of the walls that skirt the whole peninsula; of the theatres and other scanty traces of the old life within the city. Even to a traveller innocent of the facts of Greek history, the drive at sunset along the rim of the peninsula and the indenting harbours will be one of the best remembered experiences in the neighbourhood of Athens, by reason of the sheer physical beauty of land and sea, islands and distant mountains. The terminus of the electric railroad from Athens to Piræus is in the northwest corner of the modern town between the lines now assumed for the “Themistocles Wall” and the “Wall of Conon,” dating, respectively, from the two most significant epochs in the history of Piræus. Although the tyrant Hippias had begun to fortify the Munychia hill in the sixth century B. C., his undertaking was interrupted, and it was left for Themistocles, in the early part of the fifth century, to begin, and finally to carry well on the way to completion, the transformation into a sea-fortress of this natural vantage-ground. Later, he was for removing Athens itself to Piræus. Failing in this, he shifted the habitat for the new fleet from the open roadstead of Phalerum, which was nearer Athens, to the land-locked harbours of Piræus. But the return of the Persians, ten years after Marathon, surprised the Athenians with their preparations incomplete, and Athens was transferred, not indeed to Piræus, but to the “wooden walls” of the triremes themselves. When, under Pericles, Athens reached the acme of her intellectual, artistic, and material power, around the harbours at Piræus had been built a well-planned city, with stately avenues and dwellings for wealthy men and wealthier gods. The port had been completely fortified either by the restoration and carrying out of the interrupted building or by the extension of the plans of Themistocles. A massive wall inclosed the three harbours within its circuit, and strong moles, lasting on into modern times, guarded their entrances. Ship-houses had also been built, and doubtless an arsenal, though a less pretentious one than the great structure afterwards erected. In short, all the paraphernalia existed for offensive and defensive naval operations. The “Long Walls,” actually built soon after the banishment of Themistocles in 472 B. C., had united Athens and its port into a dual city. No greater proof of the vital union of the two cities could be cited than the rage and grief felt by the citizens when, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, in 404 B. C., the Spartans razed the Long Walls. It was amputating the very feet of the imperial Queen of the Ægean.