Avia is a coastal village with a beautiful beach and great views of the Messenian Gulf, 12 km from Kalamata.
At the site where Paliochora is today, the Homeric city of IRI, which Homer calls "poetessa", meaning crowded, verdant and fertile, is placed by historians and archaeologists.
King Cresfont renamed the area Avia after Hercules' daughter and Heraclides Glinos' nurturer, Avia, who took refuge there with the Glinos(as an infant), persecuted by the Achaeans. According to Pausanias, it is one of the seven cities Agamemnon promised as a dowry to Achilles. Valuable archaeological findings have been found in the broader region of Avia, which testify to pre-Mycenaean civilisation.
The ancient city of Avia flourished for about 1400 years, from the 11th century BC. until the 3rd century AD and was often the apple of contention between the Messenians and the Spartans.
