Euboea(Evia) Island
May 4th, 2007
Euboea (in modern Greek ‘Evia’) can be reached from several places on the mainland, but before deciding your route it is wise to be sure exactly where you want to go. The largest Aegean island of all, bar Crete, it is ninety miles long, and it takes a long time to travel between the main centres. A journey by road from Athens to the principal city of Chalkis will be a good deal shorter than one from Chalkis to Edipsos in the north or Karystos in the south. Chalkis (now commonly called Halkida) stands on the Euripos, where the passage between Euboea and Attica is only 130 feet wide and is spanned by a retractable bridge.
Euripos, the narrowest point of a long winding channel, means ’swift current’, and is rightly named, for the tidal streams can attain seven or eight knots, and even more after a bout of bad weather. Since there is a period of slack water lasting only about ten minutes between the north-going and south-going currents, and since these currents alternate as often as seven times a day, the passage is diffi¬cult even for steamships. Yachts and small boats are advised to look for a tow through the narrows. Chalkis is only about twenty miles from Thebes, the chief city of ancient Boeotia, and as long as Boeotia controlled the narrows, the Athenian trade with the north depended on their good will. The first bridge over the Euripos was built by the Boeotians in 410 BC, and the Athenians were never able to challenge their authority in these waters.
During the early Christian and Byzantine periods not much is heard of Euboea, but after the Latin conquest of Byzantium in 1204 it was the scene of constant political bargaining and warfare. Lying where it does, it was a natural theatre for the ambitious adventurers who poured into the eastern Mediterranean with the Fourth Crusade. The carving up of the Byzantine Empire between Venice and the various national groups from all over Europe left wide power in the hands of Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, the military leader of the so-called Crusade. Balked by Baldwin, Count of Flanders, in his ambition to rule over the newly created Latin Empire of Romania, he accepted the nominally subservient position of King of Salonika,
with licence to extend his kingdom over so far unconquered parts of the Archipelago.
Euboea was an early acquisition, and Boniface divided the island into three large fiefs, or baronies, with capitals at Negroponte (as Chalkis was then called), Oreos in the north and Karystos in the far south. This was in spite of a treaty agreement which gave Oreos and Karystos to Venice. However, Venice preferred the indirect power of her merchants, supported by a powerful fleet, to fighting on land for her rights, and this triarchy remained the basis for local rule for the next two centuries. Nevertheless Venice gradually established herself as de facto mistress of Euboea. She controlled most of its affairs through her ‘bailie’ in Negroponte, leaving a succession of Frankish or Lombard nobles to squabble and fight over tracts of land and the dozens of huge castles they built to protect themselves.
In the fifteenth century another force arrived in the eastern Mediterranean which was to bring its history to a full stop for over three hundred years - the Ottoman Turks. The still intermittently effective empire of Byzantium fell to them in 1453, and their armies swarmed to attack the outposts of Greece and the Balkans. In 1470 the Sultan Mohammed II arrived at the gates of Negroponte with 70,000 men and a fleet of 300 ships.
The name by which the city (and sometimes the whole island) was then called was once thought to derive from the ‘black bridge’ which crossed the narrows. First built by the Boeotians in 410 BC, it was constantly renewed and fortified during the Middle Ages. The Venetians built a fort half way across, and by the fourteenth century they had completed a strong circuit of walls, with the Lion of St Mark on guard over all the city gates. It is now accepted that Negro¬ponte was an Italian corruption of the Greek Euripo, and there has never been anything black about the bridge.*
Mohammed took a long look at the fortified bridge and the tidal waters rushing through it, and he decided against trying to force a passage. Instead he built a bridge of boats at another point a little to the south, and his army crossed to invest the city. The garrison was outnumbered but defiant:
On 25th June, when he had made all his preparations, the Sultan, through an Italian interpreter, summoned the bailie to surrender,
saying he was resolved to have the city, but that, if the bailie would yield at once, he would exempt the inhabitants from all taxes for ten years, would give to every noble who had a house two, and would allow the bailie and proveditore to live in comfort at Negro-ponte, or else would assign them a liberal allowance at Constanti¬nople. To this the bailie ordered his aide-de-camp to reply that Venice had made Negroponte her own, that ten or twelve days at the most would decide her fate, and that with God’s help he would burn the Sultan’s fleet and root up his tent, so that he would not know where to hide his diminished head. At this bold reply all the men on the walls shouted aloud, and the interpreter was bidden go tell his master to eat swine’s flesh, and then try to storm the moat. The insult was faithfully reported to Mohammed, who from that moment resolved that the garrison should have no mercy.*
In fact the defenders were relying on a Venetian fleet which they expected to arrive in the channel any day. Its commander, an unmili-tary-minded lawyer called Nicolo da Canale, had already wasted time at Skiathos, and instead of intervening to protect the crossing had sailed off to Crete for reinforcements.
Now in the nick of time his advance squadron was sighted, and Mohammed was on the point of ordering a retreat. But instead of attacking at once to break up the bridge of boats and isolate the Turkish army, da Canale dithered too long and the fierce current turned against him. Seeing the Venetians anchor harmlessly in a bay six miles to the north, Mohammed made his final assault and cap¬tured the town. The bailie’s earlier insult ensured that the men were massacred and the women and children carried off as slaves. Only in 1833 did the then Sultan give up the keys of Chalkis to the new Greek government in exchange for the island of Lemnos, which had just been liberated.
Nowadays you will probably have crossed the bridge and passed within the Venetian walls without realizing it. There is hardly a break in the buildings, and the fort which stood in the middle of the bridge has been pulled down. There is not a lot to be seen in Chalkis today. From the Turkish period a mosque survives in the old town, though now it serves only as storage for the museum. Of more interest is the church of Agia Paraskevi on your right after crossing the bridge. It was built as a Byzantine basilica but converted to the Gothic style in the fourteenth century - an oddity in this part of the world.
From Chalkis you must decide whether you want to go north or south. The long road to the north at first follows the coastal plain, but then climbs into the wooded hillsides between Mt Pixaria and the Kandili range, both rising to nearly 4000 feet. The woods are almost all of the Aleppo pine (pinus halepensis), and leave enough light and air for flowers and herbs by the roadside, which means that beekeep¬ers can set out their hives in thousands all along this part of the route. It is a most beautiful drive.
An early and very worthwhile degression from the main road begins at Nea Artaki. This is the route taken by climbers with their sights on the summit ridge of Mount Dirphis, at over 5000 feet the highest point of the range which is the backbone of northern Euboea. Even if you are not planning to tackle the summit, the road leads to the very attractive village of Steni, where there are a few hotels of modest comfort. And of course there are magnificent views of the mountains ahead.
There is a bus service from Chalkis, and the motor road ends in a car park about a mile beyond the village. From there an unmetalled road (drivable in good weather) leads to the mountain refuge of the Fountain of Liri. Serious climbers can get the key and more detailed directions from the Alpine Club in Chalkis. The climb from the refuge to the summit takes about an hour and a half, and the path is marked in red at intervals.
Once over the final col, the main road north drops to the village of Prokopi, where the chief interest for visitors from Britain may be the estate maintained by the Noel-Baker family, descended over several generations from the Noels - who were themselves descendants of Byron. It was originally a Turkish-owned enclave, and is still known by the Turkish name of Achmetaga. The present owners had difficul¬ties with earlier Greek governments, but the house which is the centre of the property takes in students from all over the world to learn arts such as weaving and pottery in a simple but beautiful and traditional setting. The estate is a good example of what you find in this part of Euboea - sensible afforestation, good irrigation schemes and a well conducted agricultural system. The pine forests are sof¬tened by many walnut, plane and other deciduous trees.
In the village the church of Agios Ioannis Rossos (St John the Russian), which figures in most guide books, is a disappointment. Money has clearly been spent on it, but the result is a harsh exterior and garish painting within. The most interesting feature is an elabo¬rate entombment of a carved wooden figure which represents its
patron saint, whose story illustrates the confused events in the north¬ern Aegean during the last few centuries. This was a soldier from Tsarist Russia who was captured by the Turks and carried off as a slave to Urgiip (Greek ‘Prokopion’) in Turkey. He died there in 1730, but when Greek refugees returned to Euboea in 1923 they brought his relics with them, and substituted the Greek name of their village of exile for the Turkish contraction of Achmet Aga. The last bi¬zarre touch came when their hero was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1962, and a yearly pilgrimage instituted on 27 May.
From the wide central plateia in Prokopi a bus will take you by way of the main road junction at Strophilia to the fishing harbour of Limni on the west coast. This is an attractive place. There are two or three sensible small hotels, and although the beaches nearby are pebbled a few days here could be very pleasant. This would give you a chance to visit the convent of Agios Nikolaos, or the Moni Galataki, at a place of that name about four miles down the coast to the south. The road along the shore is easy walking, but good enough too for a taxi ride - worth it for one way, at least, to save your legs. There is an excellent restaurant at almost exactly the half-way mark.
The convent stands on a green headland above a rocky shore -just the place for a classical temple to Poseidon. In the seventh or eighth century the sailors’ god was replaced as usual by the Christian St Nicholas, a basilica church was built on the same site, and substantial monastic buildings grew up around it under the Byzantine system. Then in the confused period after the Fourth Crusade the place was frequently damaged either by pirates or by marauding followers of the various factions disputing sovereignty in the island. Total destruc¬tion followed the Turkish conquest in 1470, and the monastery was deserted.
Now comes a time when chance and a touch of the supernatural intervenes. In the sixteenth century the captain and owner of a large ship trading out of Constantinople was sailing down the tricky north Euboean channel bound for Chalkis when he was caught by a sudden squall off the mountains of Kandili:
Being in danger of foundering any minute he called on St Nicholas to rescue him. Quickly the storm abated, and his ship came ashore on the beach below the ruins of the monastery. Galatakes (so called because he came from Galatia in Asia Minor) climbed up
and knelt before the ruins of the church and undertook to rebuild the monastery.*
That he was as good as his word is testified to by an inscription over the church door, giving the date it was finished as December 1547.
It must be said that the name of the monastery has been otherwise explained, given that gala is the Greek for ‘milk’:
According to another tradition the monastery once possessed a vast number of sheep, from which they made quantities of cheese. So great was the supply of milk that they constructed a Galaktago-geion to bring it by artificial channels from the sheeptolds to the monastery, where there were underground cisterns to receive it.**
No doubt the Romans would have called it a Lactiduct.
There must have been many shipwrecks along this dangerous coast, and many fervent prayers to St Nicholas. After another rescue twenty years later the grateful skipper undertook to decorate the still bare walls of the church with the proper wall paintings. Both he and Galatakes were rewarded by having their portraits included in the decoration, with an inscribed date of 1567. Although most of the paintings were destroyed in a later visitation by the Turks during the war of liberation, there is a little chapel to the south of the nave which is covered on walls and ceiling with unusually fine frescos. There has also survived a graphic Last Judgment at the west end, with a ladder to heaven and a splendid dragon waiting below for the rejects. All these are in the style of the sixteenth century.
Fate had not finished with Galataki even then. In 1896 a rich seam of magnesite was discovered on the property. Mining was undertaken by a European company, and the revenues from this made it one of the richest communities of the region. In spite of this it became more difficult to recruit monks after the last war, and by an ecclesiastical decree of 15 November 1946 it was converted to a nunnery.
The convent buildings are simple and pleasant, set in a flowery courtyard. A substantial stone tower rises from the south wall, first built by the monks as a refuge from attacks by pirates. Now the sisters have fitted out bedrooms on three of its floors for visitors and pilgrims. Their simple furnishings only underline the beauty of the
views to seaward on every floor - and at least one of the sisters makes an excellent walnut liqueur.
From Strophilia the road continues northward, but it is a long haul. The big holiday complex at Loutra Edipsou is more easily reached by ship from Agios Konstantinos or Kamena Voula on the mainland. It was originally, as the name implies, a fashionable watering place for Greek valetudinarians, with warm sulphur-impregnated springs. Now the tourist industry has taken over and nearly a hundred hotels are listed in the current brochures.
It is all a lovely coastline, and one can understand why holiday-makers flock there - not only to Edipsos but to other beaches like Orei and Pevki on the north coast. Pevki (the Greek word for pines) is not far from Cape Artemision, off which the first naval action of the Persian campaign of 480 BC was fought. It was inconclusive, but as in later actions the Greeks scored by knowing the tides and weather conditions better than the Persians, who outnumbered them. Istiaea, the largest town in the area, has a fine position but is now an untidy industrial sprawl.
Should you be bound only for the southern part of Euboea, then it will likewise save you time to take the ferry from Rafina on the east coast of Attica, a much shorter bus ride from Athens than it is to Chalkis, and then only an hour by sea. These little ships cross to three different ports on the west coast, Nea Stira, Marmari and Karystos. All three have pleasant holiday developments and good beaches, but Karystos is a town of character in its own right. The visitor who lands on the long quayside will find everything and everybody more relaxed than elsewhere in Euboea. There are beaches at either end of what is really a broad promenade, with attractive stretches of soft sand.
The line of bars and restaurants which extends for a hundred yards at the back of the quay is shaded all along by the thick leaves of as many mulberry trees. Their trunks are painted white and their lower branches are often padded to protect the head of a diner if he rises too suddenly. The cooking is good, and it is a very civilized scene, especially when on a Sunday evening the inhabitants turn out for the family volta - the slow parade up and down the front by all genera¬tions in their best clothes. Only in midsummer do the restaurants get so overcrowded that you have to queue for tables, and even then the good humour of the Greek waiter keeps most people happy.
The history of Karystos crops up literally as you walk about the town. In a street running parallel to the front a kiosk attendant will
show you the remains of a classical temple at his feet. Next to the pleasing gardens which border the sea at the quieter end is a massive foursquare mediaeval keep. Above all - and this is literal too - the town is dominated by the huge and spendidly situated Castello Rosso which crowns the bare hill behind.
This hill was probably the ancient acropolis, but the modern his¬tory of Karystos begins as usual with the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. We have seen that it was the capital of one of the three baronies instituted by Boniface of Montferrat, and a succession of Frankish, Lombardic and Catalan nobles held both the title and the castle during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Overall power gradually passed into the hands of Venice, and in 1365 she bought the whole barony - castle, serfs and all - from the Catalan Bonifacio Fadrique. For once Venice made a bad bargain, for the land and its revenues deteriorated quickly, but it remained in the gift of Venice until the Turks took over after the fall of Negroponte.
The huge castle and the rock on which it stands blend together in the reddish-brown mass which gives it its name. You see it long before you enter the town by the road from the north. The proper approach to the entrance is from the village of Grabia in the hills to the north-west of the town, though so vast is the enclosure that another entrance overlooks Mili, a village several miles to the east. It is not so well preserved as other Crusader castles in the Levant, but it is an awesome place. With its ring of defensive walls on many levels it must have been as nearly impregnable as military architecture could make it, and huge underground cisterns ensured an endless supply of water.
Inside the dramatic eastern battlements are the tumbled ruins of houses built for servants of the Turkish rulers, instantly pulled down when freedom came. The Beys were harsh overlords, none more so than the last of them, Omar Bey, who compelled the villages around to contribute a heavy load of wood every week, to be carried up to the castle on the backs of the women if they had no donkeys. Today the Castello seems a massive irrelevance, and perhaps it always was. It protected nothing except its masters against their rivals of the same race and breed, whereas the eastern Crusader castles were at least first built to defend the Christian against the infidel.
The hill villages to the north are lovely, the pick of them being Mili. Its scattered houses are perched above leafy depths, fed by streams running down all year from outlets in the village. Wine is made locally, and drunk under the vine trellis of a little bar-restaurant.
There is more evidence of an unfailing supply of water at the shrine of Agia Triada, a little to the west of Grabia. It is a stunningly lovely place. As you come to the end of a dusty track (a taxi will take you there) you pass into a cool Arcadian world of ancient plane trees and gushing water. Facing you at the foot of a narrow ravine is the very small church of the Holy Trinity, nicely restored in 1960 by a local man in memory of his two young grandchildren. The source of water is a cavern in the rocks above, which must surely have been a place for benign nymphs, or later for a hermit. Under the spreading and twisting trunks of the planes you may see a great company of black and tan goats enjoying the shade. The goatherd will be doing the same, sitting on the low wall outside the church. He told the writer that there were five hundred in his flock, and that the tiniest had been born that morning. It was hard to leave such peace behind. The nearest neighbour to Karystos along the coast is Marmari, to which there is a direct ferry from Rafina. A genuine fishing harbour, it lies in a pretty bay sheltered by offshore islands to the west. Small holiday houses are being built on the eastern arm of the bay by Greeks from the mainland, but on the whole Marmari is natural and unspoilt. This strikes you most if you walk round the harbour to the right, where little houses with bright terraces border the path above the sea.
From Karystos an excellent road leads north, keeping to the spine of the narrowest part of Euboea. After Zarakes the road drops down to an enclosed plain with the dried-up Lake Dystos in its centre. On a low hill to the east of the lake are the remains of a fifth-century city -not today an attractive site, but more fertile than the bare hillsides which surround it. A mile or so further on is the village of Krieza, the birthplace of Nikolaos Kriezotis, who commanded the strong Euboean contingent in the War of Independence. Then you come to the dusty road junction at Lepoura.
The left turn will take you back to Chalkis by way of the coastal road, along which the most interesting place is Eretria, in classical times an equal and rival city to Chalkis. Their rivalry came to a head during the seventh century BC over the fertile Lelantine plain which lies close to the south-eastern limits at Chalkis. The winner was Chalkis, and although Eretria played an important part in the Persian wars, her position on an open coast never matched the advantages of her rival, who controlled the straits. When the Romans arrived in 198 BC they promptly sacked the town, and a hundred years later it was completely destroyed during Sulla’s campaign against Mithridates.
The modem town is built on the classical site, but fortunately (unlike Chalkis) it never grew big enough to hide the important features. This has left it the best preserved classical site in Euboea. In the open spaces of the town you can see the foundations of a Doric temple of Apollo, and of a tholos in the neighbourhood of the agora. More accessible remains are up in the north-west quarter, where new building has stopped short of them. At the foot of the slope is a good small museum, above which are the excavated remains of a residen¬tial district which includes a fourth-century palace, with a very prac¬tical-looking clay bath. This area lies close to the western gate, which has some good intact masonry, while above that you find the cavea of a big Hellenistic theatre. The main interest is in the elaborate arrange¬ments for the scena, as the seating has mostly been plundered to build the later town. It never rose very high, as it was built well down the eastern slopes of the plateau where the earliest acropolis was built. This area was excavated by Swiss archaeologists in the late 1990s, who discovered traces of late Mycenaean occupation, includ¬ing a touching infant’s grave and a sophisticated system of wash¬rooms.
As you near Chalkis, just before reaching the town of Vassiliko, a little road to the left leads to Lephkandi, now a popular seaside resort. The headland beyond it was extensively excavated by the British School at Athens in two campaigns during the 1960s. It yielded important clues to the last years of Mycenaean civilisation before it was overtaken by the Dark Ages around 1000 BC. More recently the British School has turned its attention to a hill at Toumba, a little to the north of Lephkandi, where a large and palatial building has been identified as belonging to the pre-Geometric period, and largely re¬stored by the British School. It is surrounded by extensive burial grounds, which have yielded yet more clues to one of the least known periods of Greek island history.
Your last call in Euboea may be to Kymi, because its harbour, the Paralia Kymis, is the starting point for the only ferry line which serves the island of Skyros. There is no difficulty in getting to Kymi, but it is a long journey by bus, whether from Chalkis or Karystos. If you come from Karystos you may have to change buses at Lepoura. Twelve miles north along the road from Lepoura it forks again, and the bus takes the left-hand branch through a series of mountain villages, eventually reaching Kymi by following the contours of the wooded lower slopes of the Mavrovouni (Black Mountains). Behind the Mavrovouni are the immense bare summits of the Dirphi
mountains, which dominate the coastline of Euboea on this side. With the sun setting to the north-west behind them, and clouds swirl¬ing around the tops, it is one of the most dramatic mountain scenes in the Aegean.
This road comes first to a village called Chania Avlonariou, where there is a splendid late Byzantine basilica dedicated to Agios Dimitrios. It contains the usual range of dramatic frescos of the period, though there is a danger of finding it locked. You may be able to find someone with a key in the small town of Avlonari itself, a mile or so up a side road to the east, chiefly notable for a massive Venetian tower built on Roman foundations.
If you return to the Kymi road (for this diversion assumes you have independent transport) and take the next fork to the left, you will find at Agia Thekla the first of many little Byzantine churches. The cluster here is explained by the foundation as early as the sixth century of the archbishopric of Avlonari, and those familiar with the rural parts of Crete will recognise the same tiny naves, thickly painted with frescoes, and the apse with a little square window open¬ing which lights the sanctury from the rear.
Kymi itself is a pleasant if featureless little red-roofed town, lying high up on a hillside facing east. It was thoroughly sacked by Omar Bey after the 1821 rising, so that both the principal churches have modern exteriors. The more interesting is the Panagia of the Dormi-tion (Koimisis) of the Virgin, really the best thing in the town. In spite of its treatment by Omar Bey, a sensible nineteenth-century restora¬tion has left it a lot of charm. You see it first below you from the road, blue domes nestling among cypresses and flowering trees. A wide paved courtyard looks down over the sea, and swallows nest in the scaffolding holes of the surrounding wall. Inside is one of the loveli¬est Virgin and Child ikons, which must date from the seventeenth century. The Dormition next to it is probably later, but still painted with skill and feeling.
While in Kymi it is worth taking a short taxi ride to the Moni tou Sotirou, the convent of Christ the Saviour, about six miles to the north in a fine situation overlooking the coast. This is a cheerful and prosperous place, with the sisters all lending a hand in a well organ¬ized plan to turn part of the old buildings into new living quarters. Before going into the church women visitors not wearing a skirt will be most politely proffered one from a stock kept at hand, which can be put on over the offending trousers. The dedication of the church is to the Metamorphosis, or Transfiguration, but the
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