Sifnos (Siphnos) Island
Siphnos is equidistant from Seriphos and Kimolos, in this western chain of islands. The only modern harbour is at Kama res, where a deep inlet cuts into the mountains on the west coast, with only just room for a small village beside it and for the big concrete quay where the ferries berth. Although there is still a fishing fleet, with all the activity which goes with it, it is no longer mainly a fishing village. Gone is the waterborne volta, or evening parade of boats which was seen with surprise and delight on an earlier visit. To balance that loss, the mining village to the left of the harbour has vanished, and only the white gleam of an occasional house or church lights up the brown hillside. Now the not unattractive modern buildings beside the inner quay are for cafes and small restaurants, with guest houses and rooms to let filling in the space behind.
Perhaps fortunately, there is little room for further development, and most visitors will board bus or taxi to take them the few miles up the modern road to the chief centres of Apollonia and Artemona. On the way you will soon see how Siphnos differs from its neighbours. The road climbs by the side of a long steep valley, green and well watered below, with clumps of pink oleander growing high up its sides.
Apollonia and Artemona, on the watershed of the island, straggle into one another in much the same way as the religious territories of Apollo and Artemis once overlapped. You come first to Apollonia, a village without much obvious grace, but the most convenient place to stay if you want to get to know Siphnos. It straggles on a north-south
axis, and the most attractive part follows the narrow street leading from behind the bus stop towards the southern quarter of Katavati. Not unlike the quieter streets of Paroikia on Paros, it has no ‘tourist-trap’ shops - only a few of those marvellously muddled pantopoleia, or general stores, where the owner will go immediately to a top-heavy pile of assorted goods and pick out exactly what you want, then write out clearly on the back of an envelope the price of every purchase.
At this point you are likely to meet a Pappas with flowing beard and flying soutane, striding down from one of the churches which stand higher up on either side of the street. After two small ones to right and left, the way gets steeper, and steps lead up past the much bigger church of Agios Spiridon in a garden of glorious flowers. The best thing in the ornate and conventional interior is a long-case clock with a fine brass pendulum - made in London. The clock face stands (permanently) at five past three. Finally comes the primary school, a fine building in a fine position, and then you come out on to the main road leading south past the half-deserted village of Exembela and the big square monastery of Vrissi.
Exembela is a strange place, well worth a detour to the left of the main road. Once, apparently, it was the artistic and entertainment centre of Siphnos. Poets, musicians and singers congregated in its cafes, and the resulting high spirits led their Turkish masters to call the village Aksham Beta, meaning ‘Trouble in the Evening’. The story credits the Turk with unexpected humour, but whether it really explains the name is doubtful. There is little merriment now. Many of its cottages are ruins, and two big schools in the neo-classical style stand deserted; in the grounds of one a family of goats seem to be the only pupils. Yet one can see life returning. The schools will never reopen, but young couples have come out from Apollonia to newly built houses, and at every corner are gardens old and new. There are banks of white marguerite daisies, beds of Madonna lilies, masses of wistaria, and roses everywhere. With no lack of water Siphnos has a show of garden flowers far more varied than the geraniums and bougainvillea which brighten the dryer islands.
The Vrissi monastery down the road is conventional in plan: a door in the high wall leads to a courtyard, and the church within has an arcaded porch. Its foundation by a wealthy Siphniot in the seven¬teenth century has ensured it a good wooden templo, but the most interesting thing in the monastery is its museum of religious arts -early gospels, documents, embroidered vestments and decorated
vessels. There are only two or three monks now, and as they spend much of their time in the fields it may be difficult to find one to let you in.
The road you are on leads in about six miles to the long sandy beach of Platy Gialos on the south coast. To reach it you need a bus, which leaves the crossroads in Apollonia several times a day. Make sure you know when the last one returns. There are rooms to let down there, and two or three friendly restaurants on the edge of the sand. At the far end is a hotel (open only from June to September) and beyond that a cliff path passes above some enticing rocky coves. The neat modern farmhouse at the end of the path has pigeons on the roof, while quantities of chickens, sheep and goats share the shade of the big tree behind. In a shed beyond the house they make goat’s cheese on a commercial scale, dripping the congealing milk into low round wicker baskets to set, and putting them to mature on frames hung from the roof. The young wife of the farmer, well dressed and edu¬cated, shows you round with pleasure.
If you see piles of dry brushwood stacked behind one of the houses along the sea front, they are there to fire the kiln of an adventurous potter. He is trying to revive an industry for which Siphnos was famous in the first century BC, according to Pliny. It became a thriving export trade during the eighteenth century. During the following century it steadily expanded, and between the two world wars even the potters themselves went abroad to set up ce¬ramic centres on the mainland and on other islands. In Siphnos the industry declined suddenly during and after the last war, and without national help it may never recover. The story of this industry is told in an excellent guide, Siphnos, the Potter’s Island, by Georgios Moussas, written in English and on sale in Apollonia. It would be a good idea to buy it as soon as you arrive.
You can leave the bus a mile before the road descends to Platy Gialos, and walk down to the monastery church of Chrysopigi, beyond which there is another good sandy beach. The monastery is no more, but the church of the Panagia is kept up, standing with its feet almost in the water at the end of a rocky promontory. The causeway leading to the church is interrupted by a gap in the rocks, which leaves it confined on a virtual island. There is a good legend about this gap. Three local women, as the custom still is, came down one evening to make the usual preparations before the next day’s service, only to find seven pirates asleep on the floor. The pirates woke, the women fled, the pirates pursued hot foot. The women
prayed to the Virgin, the Virgin split the rock behind them and let in the sea. Foiled and awestricken, the pirates took to their boat and vanished. Both parties would have had a good story to tell their friends.
The beach beyond the church is inviting, and there is a large bar-cafe for refreshments before or after swimming. From the prom¬ontory you look north into another bay, at the head of which is the pleasant fishing village of Pharos. To reach it you must take a different bus down from Apollonia, as the road to it forks left shortly after the Moni Vrissi. There is of course a lighthouse (pharos) on the cliff to seaward (though this consists only of a light fixed on a post) and beyond it a path from where you can scramble down for a swim. The village beach is a nice one, small and sheltered, with a farm¬house above it which has a terrace restaurant where the family serves good local produce. On a recent visit a baby pig had just been born, but the poor mite was destined for some unfeeling restaurant in Apollonia or Kamares. Far fewer people come to Pharos than to Platy Gialos or Chrysopigi, and it must be said that the mid-morning and late afternoon buses to and from those popular places can be appall¬ingly crowded.’Chrysopigi’ means ‘gold spring’, and Siphnos in antiquity was described as ‘rich in gold and silver, and adorned with Parian mar¬ble’. But the mines were worked out, or submerged by a volcanic change in the seabed, during classical times. Pausanias attributes the destruction of the mines of Siphnos to the anger of Apollo. The people of Siphnos had been accustomed to offer Apollo an annual gift of a gold egg, but on one unfortunate occasion they attempted to deceive the god by presenting him with an imitation gilt one. No doubt there was an efficient assay-master at Delphi, for the ruse was at once discovered. Hence, legend has it, the anger of the god and the destruction of the mines of Siphnos. As for Parian marble, Antiparos is almost as close to the east as Seriphos is to the north, and the Prophet Ilias on Paros glowers at his opposite number on Siphnos across no great stretch of water.
Another less crowded bus journey will take you from the cross¬roads in Apollonia to Kastro, the old capital and one of the most special places in the Aegean. It lies on the eastern side of the island, clinging like all these old townships to its protective hill, and hedged round with a fourteenth-century wall. Unfortunately, as from so many of its date, the glory is departed, the older mediaeval buildings are in ruins, and the streets have an abandoned air. The most
distinctive houses are those built into the wall itself, facing across th sea to Paros and Antiparos. Here, unusually in the Kyklades, on finds enclosed wooden balconies (somewhat reminiscent of Malta built out beyond the walls. One is also reminded of Rhodes, and it i true that the walls were built by a member of the Spanish family o Da Corogna who had served there with the Knights of St John. I: 1307 he established a sovereign state on Siphnos, independent of th Duchy of Naxos.
John Da Corogna’s castle on Siphnos (or Siphanto as it becam known by one of the many corruptions from Greek to Italian at thi time) stood intact for three hundred years. In 1465 it passed to th-more powerful Bolognese family of the Gozzadini, who managed b; diplomacy to keep it out of the hands of the Turks until 1617. Th” castle and its owners, however, were unable to protect the people o the island from the murderous inroads of Turkish freebooters - am this was true of most of the islands of the central Aegean. We reai that during the fifteenth century:
At both Naxos and Siphnos there was such a lack of men that many women were unable to find husbands; in fact the small and wretched population of the latter island, still the absolute property of the Da Corogna, who had a tower there in a lovely garden, was mainly composed of females, who were zealous Catholics, though they did not understand a word of the Latin language in which their services were held.*
In that tower and garden war and terror must have seemed fa away, and today there are few quieter or more peaceful places. Thre arched gateways, or loggias, pierce the wall on the landward side The bus stops below the middle one, and you can spend a happ; morning wandering through the narrow streets, sometimes passinj under small bridges, thrown out by the houses to connect them wit! the higher ground where the next street runs. You can explore thi ruins of stately houses at the northern end, where the big windov spaces of the upper storeys still illustrate the elegance of their own ers’ lives. On the highest ground of all, from where you look nortl along the rocky coast, are the marble foundations of a classica temple, probably of the seventh century BC, which would have been ; landmark for sailors approaching from Paros to Seriphos.
In the village below it is easy to get lost, and here Georgios Moussa’s guide to Siphnos is invaluable, because it has a detailed map of Kastro on the last page. With its help you should be able to find some of the many fascinating churches which have survived from the sixteenth century, and although not many people are about in the streets you can usually trace the key to a house nearby.
The pick of them is the Panagia Eleoussa (Our Lady of Mercy) in the broader central street leading down from the old quarter. The key is kept in a house beyond and round the corner to the left. The carved lunette over the doorway has on each side the bows of a ship under sail. The date there is 1635, but this only marks the year when it was last restored - a sign of some prosperity under Turkish rule. Indeed one must remember that, though the Turkish conquest was a disas¬ter for the Latin overlords, it brought peace to the islands by eliminating all resistance and silencing the constant feuding be¬tween ambitious families. Once in control, the authorities put a stop to most of the piracy and allowed the Greeks to worship as they pleased.
The loveliest thing in the Panagia - and in the whole village - is an ikon of the Virgin. Her face goes right back to Duccio or Giotto, and the eyes look at you sideways with an inner light behind them. The Child is independent, even perky, and holds a scroll in one hand. You should also look for the Museum, which after temporary lodging in a disused church has at last found a home of its own. So far not many inhabitants know it is there, but there is a good collection of pieces from all periods, including Greek and Roman items which are not otherwise given much publicity here.
There are only a few cafes in Kastro, by no means always open, and you can never count on getting a meal there in the middle of the day. After 2.30 p.m. you will probably have to walk back to Apollo-nia if you want to stay longer.
The most distinctive part of modem Siphnos is the district of Artemona, a barely separate village on higher ground to the north of Apollonia. Here, as occasionally on Paros, you find substantial neo¬classical houses standing in large gardens behind high walls. Some are now put to municipal use; many were built by wealthy citizens at the beginning of the century, or as country houses for Athenian families. Empty for most of the year, if not already deserted, they contrast a little sombrely with the clean and lively intricacies of the more typical Kykladic streets around them.
The island buses all begin and end their journeys at the plateia of
Pano Artemona, a quiet spot with an authentic kapheneion and a good basic Greek restaurant. Much more interesting is to walk up there from the corresponding plateia in Apollonia, taking the narrow stepped street which begins between the Hotel Sophia and the cafe Lakis. This way takes you through the quiet suburb of Ano Petali, across the deep bed of the stream which cuts it off from Artemona, passes the far end of the plateia and carries on higher and higher till you come out among farm cottages and open fields. A restored wind¬mill is the only building now between you and the eastern cliffs, and the view back over the white houses and churches of Siphnos is one to remember. Not many people find their way up here, or enter the half dozen very individual churches you pass.
One relishes even their names, though each has something of special interest inside or outside. There is the Panagia Ouranophotia (Our Lady of the Heavenly Light), which stands on the site of a seventh-century BC temple to Apollo; the Panagia ta Gournia (Our Lady of the Troughs) above the stream where frogs croak in the spring; Agios Georgios touAfendi (the Effendi’s St George) away in the eastern quarter called Agios Loukas, on the other side of the main road; the Panagia tis Ammou (Our Lady of the Sand); the Kochi, another Panagia on the site of a temple to Artemis; and the Panagia tou Vali, built by a Greek governor of that name under the Turkish regime in the eighteenth century, and still privately owned by his descendants.
The oddest church name, with an odd story behind it, is the Panagia tou Barou (Our Lady of the Baron), said to be a miniature replica of the mediaeval convent Theologos tou Mongou, which still stands outside the town to the west. Apocryphally its wealthy founder, scolded for extravagance by his wife, replied ‘Je l’ai fait a mon gout’. The nuns’ taste however was for a good life, and accord¬ing to the great Kykladic traveller, Theodore Bent, the convent be¬came ‘the favourite rendezvous of all the gallants of Siphnos’. The further story goes that one of their recruits had been pursued to the convent by a Frankish baron, who built the little church nearby so that he could continue his suit disguised as a monk. As he could make no progress in the convent, despite its reputation, he took to seducing other ladies of Siphnos, until he was reputedly the father of a quarter of the children in Apollonia, who were given the surname Barades.
However you take all this, Siphnos must have been a lively place to live during the Turkish occupation. The liveliness is not so obvious