Paros Island
Whether you come upon them from the north, direct from Piraeus, or you approach from the south through the Sikinos-Ios channel, the dark humps of Paros and Naxos are a distinctive sight. Both are dominated by massifs in the south-east, from which the land slopes away evenly to fertile plains. The mountains of Mar-pissa on Paros and of Zeus (usually ‘Zia’ or ‘Zas’ today) on Naxos are 2500 feet and over 3000 feet high respectively, formidable fig¬ures watching over the often stormy sea gate between.
Paros, like Naxos, is on the main line of ferry services between Piraeus and Santorin, and they are both calling points for ships going farther east by way of Amorgos to the Dodecanese. The capital and port of Paros is Paroikia, which lies in a deeply indented bay on the north-western coast. Like Mykonos it is a town by the water, clean and sparkling, with the life that always revolves round boats and engines, nets and sails, arrivals and departures. Unlike the towns of Naxos and Syros it stays by the water instead of climbing to a peak above it, and its buildings are gradually extending round the long low coastline to the north.
There is a lightness and freshness about the whole of Paros, so that while there are no obvious beauty spots in the island, and it is only half the size of Naxos, it attracts more visitors. In high summer Paroikia teems with them, and it seems that every year six new hotels are completed and immediately filled by holiday agencies. Yet the council which controls the tourist industry does so with a firm good taste which should be an example to other islands. They have left a wide open space behind the fishing and small boat harbour which allows plenty of room for the long rows of yellow and dark red nets spread out along the edge, as well as for some of the boats to be pulled up on the hard.
Further on into the bay there is a line of feathery tamarisks be¬tween the road and a respectable if sometimes crowded beach. This is where most of the newest hotels have been built, and though some look better than others they all enjoy the general freshness of atmos¬phere. There are no monstrosities and there is space between them. In
the evenings and the early mornings you can still hear the soft pad-pad of a donkey going past - as smooth and sure a method of transport as man has devised for himself - or see an old man sitting by an upturned boat with an ever hopeful rod and line. It is strictly forbidden to camp or sleep out on the beach.
Most tourist activity centres on the cafes and bars near the distinc¬tive windmill on the main quayside, or round a plateia planted with trees and formal flowerbeds. Leading off this is the inevitable street flanked by tourist trade shops, but if you dive off to right or left from that you will find some pretty and unspoiled corners. To the right the ground rises to accommodate the remains of a thirteenth-century kastro - plundered but not ruined. The lower walls are in good condition and incorporate the drums of columns taken from a nearby classical temple of Demeter. They look like giant cotton reels, tucked in as they are between the rectangular blocks of marble. Beyond the kastro there are narrow winding alleys which rise gently to what was the highest point of the ancient acropolis, overlooking the sea front. Here there is an intriguing and delightfully arranged double church with a shallow blue dome, dedicated to the royal saints Agios
Konstantinos and Agia Eleni. A short arcade masks the entrance on the south side, and inside there are some fine early ikons.
In the alleyways below there are several other churches of varying interest and confusing identity. It was on a balcony next to one of these that one Sunday I saw a strange sight. A very thin old woman wearing a conical grey woollen cap was standing with a small figure - perhaps a doll - in her hands. Looking fixedly towards a new restaurant on the far side of the square she was swaying from side to side and crooning audibly. Sensing she was being watched she turned on us a disturbingly evil eye. When we asked a resident casually whether there were still any witches (magisses) in Paros the reply was evasive - perhaps there were one or two poor crazy old crea¬tures, but harmless.
A more individually interesting street goes off to the left at the beginning of the main thoroughfare. This is the Odos Lochagou Graven, and it passes the church of the Panagia Septembriani, dated 1590, with a carved marble doorway. A few yards further on is a decorative marble fountain of 1770, and on the right are some hand¬some nineteenth-century houses with large gardens. It is good to see that some of the old wooden balconies in the side streets are being rebuilt in wood instead of the usual concrete.
The informed or well guided tourist will most of all want to see the finest, or at least the most famous, church in the Kyklades -outside Tinos that is, where the Panagia Evangelistria is famous for other than architectural reasons. Here we have the cathedral of the Panagia Ekatontapiliani, a title which seems to mean ‘Our Lady of a Hundred Doors’, though it is more likely to be a corruption of Kata-poliani, meaning simply ‘in the town below’. The legend says that while ninety-nine doors have been discovered (but where?) the hun¬dredth will not be found till the Turks return Constantinople to the Christians. Another legend has it that the Empress Helena, widowed mother of Constantine the Great, having taken shelter in Paros from a storm, had a vision of finding the True Cross and vowed to build a great church on this site.
There is uncertainty about what happened next, and when. Some say that the main church was not built till the reign of Justinian I, by a pupil of the architect of Santa Sophia, an account embellished by a tale of the jealous master quarrelling with his pupil and of them both falling to their death from the roof. This would put the date early in the sixth century, a good two hundred years later than Helena’s visit. Whoever built it, it was severely damaged by an earthquake and
rebuilt in the tenth century, which makes dating difficult. The same is true of the rather charming baptistry, which has an authentic cruciform basin, and a separate entrance on the south side of the church.
However, built into the north side, beyond the templo and apse, is the much earlier basilica church of Agios Nikolaos, with a double row of Doric columns and some classical-looking entablature. This may narrow the gap between Constantine and Justinian, but there was a very significant find during the most recent restoration - a tesselated pavement of about AD 300. The subject was the labours of Hercules, so it was a reasonable guess that they had found the atrium of a private villa. A nice fancy would be that Helena was entertained here by the owner.
Later history is clearer. Under the Duchy of Naxos the Byzantine church was eventually altered to Venetian baroque, and the marble templo was built in 1911. An earthquake in 1773 during the Turkish occupation left it more or less derelict, and when a thorough restora¬tion was undertaken in the 1960s it was very much overdue. The plan was to restore as far as possible the Byzantine character of the church, and although it was carried out a little harshly one feels that a great deal of the early atmosphere has been regained. Simple and dignified, the cool grey stone interior is welcome in the summer heat, and if left undisturbed in the ancient basilica of St Nicholas for half an hour you are enfolded in great peace. It is a place for visions.
There is an annual pilgrimage to the cathedral on 15 August, yet despite its greater antiquity, beauty and interest the Katapoliani has nothing like the same appeal in the Orthodox church as the Evangel-istria on Tinos.
The courtyard to the west of the church has an upper gallery for the former monastic cells. One of these was converted to a small museum of Byzantine art, but the door seems to be permanently locked. Down below informality reigns: there is a spreading pine tree with a tangle of bell-ropes caught up in its branches, and wayward patches of bright flowers. The real Archaeological Museum is not far away, beyond the large High School playing ground. It has an excellent and well displayed collection of sculpture and the notable Roman mosaic of the Labours of Hercules.
The temple of Demeter, from which so much marble was plun¬dered, has been confidently located on the top of the acropolis, where the church of Constantine and Helena now stands. So perhaps it was an earlier sanctuary which figured in a strange episode recorded by
Herodotus.* He tells us that Miltiades son of Cimon, one of the heroes of the Athenian victory at Marathon in 490 BC, afterwards organized a punitive expedition against Paros for having contributed a trireme to the Persian fleet. His real motives were perhaps more for personal gain, but the outcome was disastrous.
The Parians played at first for time, and succeeded in strengthen¬ing their walls, which enclosed the acropolis and much of the modern town of Paroikia. Miltiades was held at bay for twenty-six days, and then one night he paid a visit to the sanctuary of Demeter which (according to Herodotus) lay outside the walls, having been enticed there by an under-priestess who had promised to show him a way through the defences. A likely story, we may think, but on finding himself inside the sacred precinct where the mysteries were dis¬played he took fright and managed to break his thigh while escaping over the outer wall. He was carried back ignominiously to his ship and abandoned the siege. The Athenians, who never appreciated failure (especially by members of the arrogant Alcmaeonid family), imprisoned him and imposed a fine of fifty talents for dereliction of duty, but the leg went gangrenous and Miltiades died before he could pay the fine.
There are two classical sites near the coast just south of Paroikia, an Asklepeion and a temple of Pythian Apollo. Local tradition puts the Miltiades episode near to the former, on a hill now called after St Anne the mother of Mary - is there a connection with Demeter perhaps? In any case there is practically nothing to see at either of these sites.
Inland, while Naxos has a more varied grandeur of mountain scenery, and a romantic beauty in its valleys, Paros is more of a classical unity. Its central mass has a sculptured quality suitable for the island which produced Parian marble, that lovely white grainy translucent stone in which Praxiteles worked, and which was used for tiles to let in light from above to the temples of fifth-century Athens. It would have been used too by the sculptor Skopas, a contemporary of Praxiteles who was born in Paros about 400 BC. He had a wide reputation as both sculptor and architect, and he was employed on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (one of the seven wonders of the world) built by the Carian queen Artemisia in memory of her husband Mausolus - hence the use of the word today as a common noun.
Another well known artist born in Paros was the satiric poet Archilo-chus, who later emigrated to Thasos with a party of colonists in the seventh century BC.
The Kyklades, unlike the mainland, were never overrun by north¬ern barbarians during the ‘dark ages’ of the tenth and ninth centuries. Instead they were able to develop undisturbed the Ionian culture which gave us Homer and later generations of great artists, and Paros had its share. This is illustrated by the Parian Chronicle, discovered in the early seventeenth century by the chaplain to the Earl of Arun¬del. It consists of ninety-three lines cut in a block of Parian marble which give an outline of Greek history from the sixteenth to the third century BC. Whoever was the author, he showed a proper disrespect for the achievements of politicians and soldiers, most of the recorded events being the births and deaths of poets, the dates of festivals and when different kinds of poetry were introduced. ‘Important political and military events,’ says one commentator rather sadly, ‘are often omitted’ - a pleasant change from the custom of later chroniclers. A small part of the Chronicle can be seen in the Archaeological Museum here, but the major part is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The quarries are easily found today on the slopes of Mount Pro-phitis Ilias, the northern extension of Mount Marpissa. They lie to the south of the main road from Paroikia to the east coast, only a few hundred yards from the bus stop in the village of Marathi. In the nineteenth century quite a settlement grew up on the spot while the French were working the quarries to provide marble for Napoleon’s tomb. Their ruined headquarters building has an unusual elegance for the context, but what is surprising is that the quarries - there are three entrances - are totally underground.
The marble was hacked away in the bowels of the mountain and brought to the surface originally by slave labour and primitive tack¬les. In the nineteenth century they used mechanical winches, and a mule-drawn tramway to take the blocks down to the harbour. So extensive are the workings that they say it takes three hours to reach the farthest point. There is marble around still, but of a lower quality than those precious seams of lychnites, as it was called. When Theo¬dore Bent visited the quarries in the 1880s he was told there was still a vein of it extending a hundred and fifty metres into the mountain, but to go on working it must have become uneconomic when ordi¬nary marble could be won so much more easily from quarries on Naxos and Thasos.
The road past the quarries continues round the mountain slopes to Leukes, a good clean hill village with nice little alleys and flowery gardens. The big church in its present form dates from 1835, but there are some earlier panels on the templo, including two views of Adam and Eve, first naked, then sketchily clothed and clearly under notice to quit. A few miles further on is Prodromos, a more unusual place. It was originally a walled village which gave protection against the pirates who infested the coast in the seventeenth century, and the only entrance is still through a gateway between the blank walls of two churches. There is an almost mediaeval atmosphere about it, with empty lanes and introspective houses. The church which gives the village its name is Agios Ioannis Prodromos (St John the Baptist), dated 1690 and typical of the period.
The road bypasses Marpissa, a village of no great interest, and continues to the coast at Piso Livadi. This small fishing village has been extended southwards round the fringe of a sandy bay, with a good deal of modem building which includes restaurants and a few hotels - not a bad place for a holiday. Another favourite place is Naousa, which is also served by buses from Paroikia. It has the most distinctive of fishing harbours, backed by a very attractive town, and ships passing along the north coast of Paros have a good view of it on the far side of a very extensive bay. The actual harbour is tiny, but somehow the colourful fishing fleet finds room not only for its boats but for the patient unravelling and mending of nets on the quay. There are good beaches in either direction as well as across on the far side of the bay. Naousa harbour is a convenient starting point for day excursions by small boat to Delos and Mykonos, which cuts out the long run up the coast from Paroikia.
All these villages are included in a round-the-island bus tour start¬ing in Paroikia. The next stop could be at Drios, a recently developed seaside village with holiday accommodation. It was off Cape Drio that the Turkish Kapitan Pasha used to anchor to receive the annual tribute of the islands. This was almost the only outside interference with their life during the occupation, though the Russian fleet under Admiral Orloff spent the winter of 1770-71 in Paros. Catherine the Great had taken advantage of her war with Turkey to try to recapture the Aegean for the west, and for five years Orloff’s fleet, with the assistance of his squadron commander Antonis Psaros of Mykonos, virtually controlled the Kyklades. The peace concluded in 1775 put an end to the venture.
Drios lies at the foot of a fertile valley, and to reach the sea you
walk through green gardens with all kinds of vegetables and flowers. This corner of Paros is good farming land, much of it arable, and a pleasant circuit continues via Angcria to the coast at Alyki, another new holiday village, and on past the airport to Pounta, whence fre¬quent ferries cross to Antiparos, and so back to Paroikia.
A journey like this, through cornfields, orchards, market gardens and vineyards, explains why the fruit and vegetable stores in the town are so well stocked - hardly anything is imported. Some local wine is produced, but the dark red (mavro) which used to be offered by the carafe has disappeared from the restaurants, and even the Paros retsina is hard to find. They say the small producers can no longer compete for price with the big imported names in this market, and what they make they drink themselves - lucky people.