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 For 10 years we avoided Naxos. It is the biggest Cycladic island and by comparison to Katapola in Amorgos, Paroikia on Paros and the harbors of Ios, Mykonos and Santorini it appeared noisy and hectic. The harbor of Naxos is the Grand Central Station of the Islands, Naxos town a small real city, built by Italians in the 14th century, including a castro, a Catholic cathedral and the mansions of a number of Venitian noble families. We decidecd, it simply was not Greek.

Then in 1985 we got stranded in Naxos town between boats for an afternoon, and I rented a moped and went on an exploration of the island's interior. It turned out to be beautiful country with large fertile valleys between wild high mountains. Uncounted Byzantine churches strewn into the landscape and some real classical Greek "antiquities" in a few places - more than in most other islands. - To this day the inhabitants of the mountain villages in the interior strike me as harsh, noisy, and beset by more grand-style machismo than, for example, in Paros. It turnes out they are the descendants of immigrants from Crete, miners who in the 19th century came to work the Tungsten mines in the northeastern mountains: Kritikos is one of the most common names.

In 1994 we returned for 3 weeks to Naxos during Easter week and explored its trails and hidden treasures. Ever since we have come back for a couple of weeks in 2004 and 2005 and still discover new stings: a church near Chalkis with unusual frescoes, newly recovered iconoclast frescoes in our beloved monastery of Christos Photodoti, and most remarkable, an exquisite 5th-century Demeter sanctuary - which has just been excavated

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 The hill of the Chora of Naxos from the harbor.

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The small chapel in the harbor is a landmark of Naxos. There used to be a Pelikan who appeared together with this chapel on all posters of Naxos. He seems to be no more. - The rusty old trawler moored there in 1994 belonged to

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fishermen from Egypt... Whom you see here repairing their nets. Their catch was transported by refrigeration trucks directly from the pier to Germany and France.

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Road to Apeiranthos East of Naxos. In the distance the mountains near Chalkis

The island is large enough that one occasionally forgets the existance of the sea when one is traveling - here by bus - through the interior. The valley ahead is the Teghea. Here lie the ancient villages of Chalkis and Sangri surrounded by cone shaped hills, which must have been sacred already to the Goddess of the Minoan inhabitants, whith whom Ariadne took refuge on her way from Crete to Athens with Theseus.....

Filoti and the marble quarries

Further inland through thousand-year old olive groves one reaches Filoti, the center of the ancient marble quarries. Their scars can be seen in the mountains in the distance.

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Road to Apeiranthos above Filoti

Behind Filoti the road climbs into the mountains along the east coast - and now Paros in the west rises from the sea again.

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Monastery of Christos Fotodoti

Fotodoti, the Lesser Cycladic Islands, and Amorgos in the distance

Just before the pass on the road to Apeiranthos, a side road turns off to Danakos. Following it, as it crests the mountains you find a small church where a foot-path leaves to the right climbing Mt. Zas. Across the road a dirt-track angles off to the left which leads to the abandoned monastery of Christos Fotodoti, Christ the Light-Giver. One of our most beloved places on Naxos: A rectangular castle on a low hill overlooking the eastern sea towards Amorgos and the Lesser Cycladic Islands. It used to be a nunnery. The convent-fortress dates from the 14th century. It encloses a church, which, I always felt, was much older, and, because of its name, was possibly built on a sanctuary of Apollo Fotodoti. Four marble columns of (late) antique origin hold up the copula of the, for Byzantine churches, unusually high church.

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Entrance gate to the monastery. The bell hangs in the oak above it.

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Jüregen and Irene Grosskreutz asmiring the iconostasis (2004). The antique columns holding the copula are seen as well as the early Byzantine marble iconostatis - notice the two imperial dragons with intertwined tails. The icons are from the late 19th century or contemporary..

When we arrived in Fotodoti in 2005 a crew of workmen were restoring the outside of the moni by forcefully injecting a special liquid cement into the cracks of its walls. The inside of the church was filled with scaffolding. The foreman showed me a spot in the cupola where they had removed layers of whitewashed stucco and had found frescoes of flowers, birds, and geometric ornaments underneath. A sign that the ceiling had been painted during the Iconoclast Period (726 and 853 AD) when, following Islamic precepts and the Bible, an imperial edict forbade the painting of images of God and people. More frescoes were emerging on the left wall of the nave. This discovery moved the church from the 14th to the late 8th century. Obviously the monastic castle had been wrapped around the much older church during the 14th century. - Unfortunately, without risking a brocken leg or skull, I was not able to climb the scaffolding and photograph the ceiling... Would one of my friends do that and send me a copy? There is one other iconoclast church on Naxos, Aghia Kiriaki, in a remote location northeast of Apiranthos. The famous "Panaghia i Drosiani" (a Moni north of Chalkis) is older (6th cent) but was painted before the iconoclast period. Other churches from this time are found in Cappadocia.

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The dome of the church in the second story courtyard of Fotodoti

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We usually spend the day there, reading or sleeping and took the last bus from the Danakos turn-off back to town. Barbara on the south wall writing a letter.

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One day we walked down from the crossing to Filoti and were promptly overtaken by a heavy thunderstorm.

Chalkis

The center of Chalkis is Yannis' charming restaurant where at lunch a large crowd gathers.

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In 2005 I had the idea to photograph the light and the people of Greece. Both turned out difficult and elusive - the light is too strong except in the late afternoon - and interesting people present themselves only occasionally. Near the door to the kitchen of the restaurant sat a good-looking young man brooding over a glass of beer, maybe one of Yannis' sons? - He caught my attention because he looked like he should really be in a monastery on Mount Athos.

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As I watched for over an hour, two young girls passed by attempting to strike up a conversation with him.

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He looked right through them, without a word.... A village tragedy? - "O Thanos" ? - There are many old customs alive in the islands: one is that the daughters inherit the house and the property from their mothers. If there is more than one daughter it is split. The sons are paid-off with an education, money, or the business of their fathers. The men are only squatters on their wives' land, like the year-king in pre-hellenic, matriarchic times --- 4000 years ago....

The Teghéa

The plain of the Teghea is surrounded by mountains from which the famous marble is quarried, one such quarry is seen here.

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The Kouros of Melanes

A few kilometers further north in the romantic backyard of an old woman lies the Kouros of Melanes. A kouros is an archaic building element, instead of a column, he was destined to hold up the roof. The female variety (e.g. on the Acropolis of Athens) are called Kori (girl). Anyway, this one broke his leg and was left behind in the quarry, unfinished. Barbara loves him. There is a second, female one nearby and a much larger third one near Apollonos in the northeast of Naxos.

The Church of Aghias Georgios Diasoritis.

I counted more than 20 venerable Byzantine churches in the Teghéa, the area around Chalkis. They hide in olive groves and in near-deserted villages. Most are locked. Some are painted with beautiful frescoes inside. One is Aghios Georgios Diasoritis (the Saviour), 10 minutes on foot west of Chalkis. It is from the 10th century and has been well restored.

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It is open (9:00-14:00), guarded by a young girl from Melanes, who will read you your horoscope (she is doing that for Barbara in the shade on the right, 2005), but knows little about the extensive, unusual, neo-platonic cycle of frescoes inside the church.

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An unusual depiction combining the expulsion from paradise with a collection of apocalyptic beasts. Below are the condemned to the right and the blessed to the left. - Like in Ossios Lucas, the Capella Palatina in Palermo, or the Norman cathedral in Cefalú, Sicily the fresco in the copula of the church depicts Christ surrounded by 12 archangels (instead of prophets). This mystical, neoplatonic interpretation, taken from the writings of the so-called "Pseudo" Dionysos-Aeropagitos shows that the frescoes were painted before 1030 AD. Murals from this period are rare. - Unfortunately the little guard-girl prevented me from taking a second photo of the copula (only one picture per tourist!) - and I have not been able to find these frescoes published anywhere.

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Rolf studying the new topographical map of Naxos (2005). An illegal copy of this map can be found in the beginning of these pages.

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The Church of Panaghia Drosia

The venerable church of the Panaghia Drossia, Holy Mother of Dew is the most famous of the Byzantine churches around Chalkis. Dating from the 7th century with some remnants of frescoes from that time, it is cavernous and dark. I visited it with the Zwahlens in 1994. Peter Zwahlen and I on the wall of the church yard.

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A few kilometers further is the village of Moni, where the Zwahlens and I had a coffee. The local Pateras joined us - a rare picture, ordonarily the Papades strenuously object to being photographed.

The Demeter Sanctuary South of Ano Sangri

Each time we return to Naxos we discover something new. In 2005 it was the Church of Aghias Georgios Diaskoridis and the Demeter Sanctuary near Ano Sangri. It has only been excavated very recently, an exquisite and exceptional antique site. .

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On a low hill, in the center of a wide open, fertile mountain-megaron archologists discovered in 1949 a very interesting sanctuary to Demeter. - It is visible in the center of the circular area in the middle ground of the photo.

Serious Greek-German excavations began in 1976, the site was opened in 1995. The excavations show that the 6th-cent-BC building was the first marble sanctuary in Greece - even the roof-tiles were from translucent marble. A "telesterion", a place for performances of the "Eleusian" mystery plays in honor of the matriachal Trinity : Demeter, her daughter Kore (alias Persephone), and the old crone Hekate.

The archeologists found the five (!) columns of the portico and more than 1600 marble pieces, built into surrounding churches and farm houses. The reassermbled building is now the most complete (50%), archaic (530 BC) temple site in Greece. Elegant and architecturally sophisticated, it presages the subtle and refined dimensions of the Athenian Parthenon by almost 50-years! Did Ichtinos, the architect of the Parthenon and the telesterion in Eleusis, come from Naxos? A not completely unreasonable question, since there is another highly sophisticated, older site at Iria on Naxos - various stages of a Temple to Dionysos from the 8th to the 5th century BC.

The reconstruction has been arranged in such a way that besides the pre-Hellenic evidence, the foundations of an 8th-century AD church (in the center of the telesterion, oriented east-west) are also visible. A small 14th-century AD chapel which sat on top the rubble has been moved a few hundred feet south-east. This allows to simultaneously see the sacred structures of 4000 years. - One of the most intelligently arranged archeological sites.

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View of the telesterion from the southwest. The fenced-in area encloses remnants of pre-Hellenic times: among them two holes in the ground and the foundation of an altar where in pre-Eleusian times sacrifices to the Great Goddess were performed. One hole must have contained the intoxicating brew drunk by the priestesses, the other may have received the blood of the sacrificial victim - a young man - o thanos, the year-king....

To me, whose imagination of early Greek times is strongly influenced by Mary Renault's historical novels, this must have been the place where to Ariadne fled after she had arrived from Crete with Theseus. Here, drunk, she participated in the dismembering of the King of that year and forgot her Greek hero and lover. Theseus, nauseated by the bloodied sight of her, sailed for Athens alone and into his disaster.... (see: The King Must Die by Mary Renault)

Aghios Prokopios and Dina Karabatis

Cat hiding from the Wind, Naxos Town, 1994. In 1994 and 1996 we stayed with the Kritikos in Naxos/Grotta. In 2004 the Grosskreutzes, who wanted to lie mostly on the beach persuaded us to move south to Aghios Prokopios. This was when we found Dina Karabatsis.

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The estuary south of Naxos Town. This area used to be the old harbor (now sanded up swamps, the airport is here)

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The Beaches of Aghios Prokopios and Aghia Anna from a restaurant on the hill of Ag. Prokopios. Dina's place is just out of the picture to the left.

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Aghios Prokopios, the mostly nude beach crowd at noon.

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Dina Karabatsi, the most cheerful landlady in the Cyclades. We discovered Dina in 2004 and fell in love with her. In 2005 we stayed again with her. (see http://dinanaxos.tripod.com )

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The Naxos beaches stretch along the west coast, opposite of Paros, for 25 km or more. This is Pirgaki beach, 20 km south of Aghios Prokopius where to one can go by bus.

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These four from Holland were always the last to leave at night.

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After the crowds were gone we had the Beach to ourselves (late September 2005). Paros across the sea. - Be warned late September and early October can be cold and humid in the Islands, but prices drop and tourists dwindle - and buses and boats get fewer too. After 15 October the place closes down for the winter.

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 The sky turns gray, time to leave (October 2004): Naxos Town with the Venitian castle and the remaining gate of a huge, never finished Apollo temple.

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 We left on the Panaghia Tinou (2004) one of the oldest boats still in service. It is held together by orange paint over its rust spots.

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The last islands, mere rocks off the coast on the way to Paros. (October 2005)