What greecetravel.com says

Kyparissi is the kind of holiday place that if you know about it, you only tell your closest friends because you are afraid of spoiling it. It has been written up in many Greek magazines, and featured in the book The Most Beautiful Villages of Greece.

Kyparissi was an ancient sanctuary of Asclepius and used to be known as Kyfanta. At some point in its history the people of this lush valley of olive trees, pine and carob left the coast and moved to a highpoint where the village was hidden from the sea and the pirates who raided the coast. This did not help them when some very determined pirates climbed the mountain and slaughtered most of the villagers and threw their bodies in a well. Many of the survivors went to Sfakia, Crete which was one of the few unconquerable places left in Greece. The people who inhabit the region now are the descendants of those who stayed and the Mavromichalis clan.

Kyparissi is actually three villages. Vrissi is the first village you come to, the highest of the three on the slopes of the mountain range that surrounds the valley. It is rich in water with a spring running through the town. Everyone has beautiful gardens, orchards and olive trees. The road then goes downhill in relatively extreme fashion, before reaching the town of Parilea. There are several small hotels here and a couple of good restaurants. There is a small beach to the right of the dock and a larger one to the left of town that stretches perhaps a quarter of a mile and separates Parilea from the third of the three villages, called Metropolis.

Beyond Metropolis the road winds through olive groves before emerging at the beach and small harbor of Agios Nicholaos. When the sea is rough this is the best place to swim and when the sea is not rough it is the best place to get away from the few people who are on the beaches in town.

But most people who come to Kyparissi find that using it as a base for daytrips to the rest of the Peloponessos requires a little more driving than they like to do on holiday and instead explore the area on foot, swim, eat long lunches while drinking local wine and then taking a nice siesta in the afternoon. There are numerous trails that lead to small churches, hidden springs, remote beaches, caves, forests and of course the abandoned village of Kapsala.