St. Paul spent about eighteen months in Corinth during his second missionary journey and the new believers became the Corinthian Church to which the letters of First and Second Corinthians were written by Paul.

Today we visited Corinth on our way to Athens, a city of great importance in the ancient Roman world; its strategic location with three harbors made it a hub for trade and commerce, contributing to its wealth and regional influence. The city’s prosperity attracted people from different backgrounds and cultures, resulting in a diverse population.

We all had a very nice surprise when we were greeted by the same local guide as yesterday, Sofie! It was a surprise to her as well!

She explained that many statues had lost their heads due to the frequent earthquakes that occur in Greece.

Inside the museum we saw more statues, two depicting young twin brothers whose skeletons were buried below. We weren’t allowed to photograph these statues, called Twin Kouroi, which were confiscated from traffickers of antiquities, but I found this photo online. You can see it with the photo I took of their skeletons. Apparently both brothers had very good teeth!

Of course, most of us were interested in the place where Paul stood on trial for teaching about Jesus’ offer of forgiveness and establishing the church. Jews who rejected his message brought him to court and accused him of teaching a new religion that wasn’t authorized by the Roman government. But Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, known as Gallio, refused to judge what he considered to be a mere religious dispute among the Jews.

I found one story about the museum and its collection really, really interesting. It was built in 1932 by the American School of Classical Studies and became the center of archaeological research. However in 1990, thieves broke in after wounding and gagging the night watchman. They stole 285 ancient objects such has marble heads, pottery, glass vessells, figurines, jewelry and numerous small objects, plus the payroll for paying the museum employees (about $3,000)—the largest theft occurring at a Greek museum, valued at over $2 million but in reality priceless. Nine years later, 266 objects were recovered in Miami, Florida by the FBI and returned to Corinth. In 2001, Anastasios Karahallos was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of organizing and carrying out the robbery of the Corinth Archaeological Museum in 1990.

We then toured the outdoor archaeological site, which included ruins from the Temple of Apollo, which was built approximately 540 B.C.

We made a short stop at the Corinth Canal, which connects the Gulf of Corinth in the Ionian Sea with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean. The idea for the canal came up 2500 years ago, but the canal was not built until 1981, and then it took 12 years to build. It has a length of 4 miles.