Serifos Island
Seriphos
life for fishermen, and for the smallholders who cultivate the fertile little valley which opens out into a delightful sheltered bay. There are many ruined houses, and the grand neo-classical building which housed the mining administration is a picturesque shell, but life is returning. New houses are being built, and there is an increasing number of rooms to let. There is a good little bar-restaurant on the water front.
A driveable road goes all the way to Mega Livadi, and from it you can diverge down to another charming bay and beach at Koutalas, but before midsummer it is not easy to find transport to either. The best method is to take the early school bus to the Chora, and near where it stops to look for a covered van which takes local men and their families’ bread to Mega Livadi and places on the way. The driver runs the restaurant in the harbour, and will serve you with refreshment before returning at midday. Later in the summer boat trips are advertised from Livadi to both Koutalas and Mega Livadi, with views of the rugged southern coastline.
The monastery known as the Moni ton Taxiarchon is easier to get to, and it is an astonishing place. You can catch an early afternoon bus either from Livadi or more reliably from Pano Chora bound for the village of Kalitsos. It will set you down beside the monastery and pick you up some three hours later on the way back. High above the northern coast, looking out towards Kythnos and its sister monastery, the Panagia tis Kanalas, it has a plain fortress-like exterior, four¬square with high walls and tiny cell windows. A low doorway leads into a tree-shaded space, with the old monks’ cells all round, up and down irregular flights of steps. In the centre is the monastery church; this building is of the seventeenth century, having replaced one con¬temporary with the sixteenth-century monastery. The dedication is to the archangels Michael and Gabriel, and there is a rich templo of seventeenth-century woodwork with a carved Abbot’s chair to match.
The surprise in this beautiful place is that it is cared for by one man, an all-purpose monk whose name is Makarios. You may meet him collecting merchandise off the bus, dressed in overalls. To show you the church he will put on a grey cassock, then take you up to the little modem kitchen in his living quarters for a cup of coffee. Later you will see him come out in jacket and breeches with a swill bucket to feed his sleek black and pink pigs. His flock of sheep and goats will be sheltering under a broad ilex, a white horse grazes below with an attendant donkey, and all kinds of poultry strut and cluck around outside the walls. There are vines and figs in abundance. Makarios in
Greek means ‘blessed’, and he is a happy man - in his fifties now, he came as a boy of sixteen.
Not long ago Makarios buried the last of his fellow monks in the graveyard of the little church outside the gates. It is not a beautiful church, and neither is the plain building next to it. If the door is open you can see that around the walls are stacked in modern steel racks rows of wooden or tin boxes, each marked by a photograph, a name and a date. If you are curious enough to open one, you may be startled. They are depositories for the bones of departed Seriphiots. A sensible practice, you may agree, to bury and leave your relative in the tiny flowery graveyard for a year or two, then allow the bones to be removed to leave room for others, yet still have them handy to be reconstituted on the Last Day.
Somehow none of this seems gruesome in the context of the place - the sunlit peace of the monastery within, the sweep of fertile fields falling to the strait that runs between Seriphos and Kythnos, the contented family of animals. Here Makarios (and his visitors) can every day consider the greatness of God and the beauty of his works.
On the way back to Livadi look out for the village of Panagia, clinging to the hillside below the road. It has a sweet little early Byzantine church, dedicated to the Virgin and built between AD 950 and 1000. This is a Greek cruciform church with a low round central tower, all roofed in red tiles. The very early frescos have now almost disappeared. To see Panagia you may have to find a room for the night - never impossible in the islands. The people of Seriphos are not as immediately friendly and forthcoming as they are, say, in Ios or Amorgos, but the right approach will usually meet a warm re¬sponse. Certainly there are few more delightful islands.