Naxos Tour

A Naxos tour explores the largest island of the Cyclades, from the marble gate of the Portara beside the harbour to the mountain villages and the ancient quarries inland. This post covers what a Naxos tour includes, the Portara, Naxos town, the mountain villages, the kouroi, the Temple of Demeter, the beaches, the Cave of Zeus, the Tragea valley, the Byzantine churches, the towers, the sanctuary of Dionysus, the museum, Cycladic culture, the emery mines, the Small Cyclades by boat and the best season. It is one of the best tours in Greece on Greece VIP.

Each section ends with a Naxos tour that can be booked online.

What does a Naxos tour cover?

A Naxos tour covers the largest island of the Cyclades: the capital Chora on the west side, the inland villages of Filoti, Apiranthos and Koronos, the slopes of Mount Zas, the highest peak in the Cyclades, and beaches near the main town.

Naxos is a Greek island in the Cyclades group of the Aegean, and the largest island of that group. The 2021 census counted 20,578 people on the island, and 8,897 of them lived in the capital, Chora, also called Naxos City. A Naxos tour uses Chora as its starting point. Roads run from the town to the villages of the interior, and ferries link its port to Piraeus, about 180 kilometres away.

The interior rises to Mount Zas, also known as Mount Zeus. At 1,001 metres, it is the highest peak in the Cyclades, and Greek myth places the childhood of Zeus in a cave on the mountain. The peak traps clouds and brings greater rainfall, so Naxos has a good water supply in a dry region. A Naxos tour into the interior crosses this high ground on the way to the mountain villages.

The main villages are Filoti, Apiranthos, Vivlos, Agios Arsenios, Koronos and Glynado. No other island of the Cyclades is as fertile as Naxos, and none is as self-sufficient. Vegetable and fruit crops and cattle breeding support the local economy. Within Greece, the island is known for Arseniko Naxou cheese, potatoes, kitron, a local lemon-citrus spirit, and thyme honey. A Naxos tour through the farmland shows the fields behind these products.

Naxos was an important centre of the Bronze Age Cycladic culture and of the Archaic period. In the 8th and 7th centuries BC it dominated trade in the Cyclades. The island was also a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum and one of the best abrasives until modern times. Marble quarrying began before 550 BC, and Naxian marble went into roof tiles at Olympia and on the Athenian Acropolis.

• Size: Naxos is the largest island of the Cyclades group.
• Highest point: Mount Zas reaches 1,001 metres, the top elevation in the Cyclades.
• Climate: Stations of the National Observatory of Athens record both Mediterranean and hot semi-arid conditions on Naxos.

A Naxos tour that includes the coast reaches the western beaches near Chora, such as Agia Anna, Agios Prokopios, Mikri Vigla and Plaka. Like other Cycladic islands, Naxos is windy, and seven sports clubs on the island offer windsurfing and kitesurfing. The mix of port town, high interior, farmland and beaches gives a Naxos tour its range across a single island.

What is the Portara on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour stops at the Portara, a large marble doorway that stands on the islet of Palatia at the northern end of the harbour of Naxos town. It is the main surviving part of a temple of Apollo that was never finished.

The name Portara comes from the Greek word for a large door, and the monument is also known as the Temple of Apollo. A causeway built in 1919 links Palatia to the town, so a Naxos tour crosses to the gate along it from the harbour. In prehistory a narrow isthmus joined the islet to the main island, and a sanctuary of Apollo is thought to have stood there from at least the 8th century BC.

The tyrant Lygdamis took power around 546 BC with the support of Peisistratos, the tyrant of Athens. He began the temple around 530 BC, and his building program also gave the city an aqueduct. The temple followed the Ionic order and measured 38 metres long and 16 metres wide, with its entrance on the northwest side. These figures give a Naxos tour a sense of the size of the planned building.

The doorway is the main surviving feature. It is made of five marble pieces, originally four, each weighing up to 20 tons, brought from the Flerio quarry about 10 kilometres away. Builders carved bosses, or bumps, on the blocks to hold ropes for a wooden crane. These were normally removed at the end of a project, so their presence shows the temple was never completed. A Naxos tour leader can point them out on the frame.

Work stopped by 524 BC at the latest, when the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta, removed Lygdamis from power. In the 5th century AD a church of Saint Mary, Panagia Palatiani, rose on the ruins, and on a Naxos tour the cut made in the threshold for its door is still visible. The Venetians later reused temple stones for the Castle of Naxos, but the heavy gate pieces stayed in place.

• Location: The Portara stands on Palatia, an islet at the northern end of the harbour of Naxos town.
• Builder: The tyrant Lygdamis started the temple in the 6th century BC.
• Orientation: The temple faced toward the sacred island of Delos.
• Plan: First work dates to the 540s BC, and around 530 BC the plan was turned by 180 degrees.

Today the Portara is one of the main landmarks of Naxos town and an emblem for the whole island, and large crowds gather there at sunset in the summer months. Greek myth links the islet to the place where Theseus abandoned Ariadne before Dionysus and his followers carried her off. A Naxos tour that begins at the Portara connects that story to the marble that still stands.

What does Naxos town show on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour in Naxos town, also called Chora, shows an old town of four districts: Grotta, Bourgos, Kastro and Nio Chorio. On a hilltop stands the Kastro, the Venetian castle that Marco Sanudo founded in 1207 as the seat of the Duchy of the Archipelago.

Naxos town is commonly called Chora, a Greek word meaning town. It sits on the west side of the island and serves as the seat of the municipality of Naxos and Lesser Cyclades. The Old Town makes up roughly 30% of the city’s area today. A Naxos tour on foot moves from the seafront promenade, called Paralia, up through the narrow lanes to the castle on the hill.

The castle is a product of the Fourth Crusade. After the Byzantine Empire fell in 1204, the Venetian nobleman Marco Sanudo, a nephew of Doge Enrico Dandolo, took Naxos and then the rest of the Cyclades. He named himself Duke of the Archipelago and made Naxos town the capital. Twenty-one dukes from two dynasties, the Sanudo and the Crispo, ruled until 1566. For a Naxos tour, this history explains the Venetian castle above a Greek island town.

Sanudo moved the capital from the interior back to the seaside, where the harbour was better than the one at Potamides. On the old acropolis he built the Kastro, with the palace, outer walls, a keep, a Gothic chapel since destroyed, the houses of the Latin families and the Catholic cathedral. Greek residents settled between the harbour and the fortress, in Bourgos and Nio Chorio. A Naxos tour still follows this layout.

The Kastro is a circular fortress whose outer ring is formed by buildings set in a defensive circle. On a Naxos tour, two gates lead in: Trani Porta, the Great Gate, and Paraporti, the side gate. Inside, a whole medieval town survives largely in its original form, with large houses that carry family crests above the doors. Landmarks include the Catholic Cathedral, the Ursuline School and the Merchant Academy.

• Crispi tower: The round tower by the main gate, also called the Glezos tower, is the only surviving castle tower and houses a museum.
• Sanudo tower: Its remains stand on the central square, and its height is thought to have passed 30 metres.
• Bourgos: This district north of the castle has narrow, winding lanes laid out in part to confuse pirates.
• In-Situ museum: Remains of the ancient city lie under the square in front of the Orthodox Cathedral.

The duchy had its own currency, the ducat, and under Venetian rule the island carried the Italian name Nasso. Sultan Selim II deposed the last Latin duke, Giacomo IV Crispo, in 1566, and the Ottomans annexed the duchy in 1579. A Naxos tour through the Kastro shows the buildings of that era still in use, from the Catholic Cathedral to the tower museum.

Which mountain villages does a Naxos tour visit?

A Naxos tour into the interior visits Filoti, Apeiranthos and Chalki, the inland villages of the largest island in the Cyclades. The route climbs toward Mount Zas, which reaches 1,001 metres and stands as the highest peak in the Cyclades island group.

Filoti is a central stop on a Naxos tour heading inland. The village sits at an altitude of 400 metres, about 18.2 kilometres from the city of Naxos, at the foot of Mount Zas. The 2021 census counted 1,617 residents, which makes Filoti the largest village on the island. Its houses spread over the slopes of two hills in three settlements: Rachidi, Klefaros and Lioiri. Local income rests mainly on livestock products, with farming and tourism behind them.

From Filoti, a Naxos tour continues to Apeiranthos, also written Aperathos, 28 kilometres north-east of the island capital. The village stands on the foothill of Mount Fanari at an altitude between 650 and 700 metres. Its dialect and customs resemble those of the mountain villages of Crete, and historians link its founding to Cretan settlers in the 10th century. The first written mention dates from 1420, in a book by the Italian traveller Cristoforo Buondelmonti.

A Naxos tour that stops in Apeiranthos finds four museums in one village: the Archaeological Museum, the Museum of Folk Art, the Geological Museum and the Museum of Natural History. Chalki, or Chalkeio, sits in the Tragaia area at the centre of the island and once served as the seat of the Drymalia municipality. Its Church of Panagia Protothronos carries an inscription recording a renovation in 1052, and its interior shows five successive layers of decoration.

• Mount Zas: Also called Mount Zeus, the peak rises to 1,001 metres above Filoti and takes its name from Zeus.
• Cave of Zas: The cave lies 630 metres above sea level, southeast of Filoti, and holds large stalactites and stalagmites.
• Summit routes: A Naxos tour with a hike uses the easier path from the Agia Marina chapel or a harder one from the Aria Spring that passes the cave.
• Myth: Greek legend places the childhood of Zeus on the mountain, and a rock carving near the cave names him Zeus Melosios, protector of the sheep.

The Cave of Zas was in use from the Late Neolithic to the Early Cycladic III period, and excavations took place in 1985-1986 and 1994. Stone objects from Melos, copper objects such as a dagger, and gold sheet came from the site. A Naxos tour that adds the climb or the cave visit links the village squares with the prehistory of the mountain.

What are the kouroi on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour includes the kouroi, large marble statues that ancient sculptors left unfinished in the island quarries. Two lie at or near Melanes in the centre of Naxos, and the largest, a 10.7-metre figure, lies in a quarry near Apollonas in the north.

Kouros is the modern term for a free-standing ancient Greek statue of a nude male youth, and kouroi is the plural. The type first appears in the Archaic period, and its female counterpart is the kore. Hurwit and Campbell note that kouroi apparently first appeared on Naxos, since the early examples are mostly carved in Naxian marble. A Naxos tour to the quarries shows the statues at the stage where the stonemasons stopped work.

The northern stop on a Naxos tour of the quarries is the Kouros of Apollonas, also called the Colossus of Dionysus. It lies in an ancient quarry above the small town of Apollonas. The figure measures 10.7 metres, is cut from light grey Naxian marble and weighs around 80 tonnes. It dates from around the turn of the 7th and 6th centuries BC. The quarry ranks among the oldest in Greece.

The statue was once taken for Apollo, after the nearby town and sanctuary of Apollo. In 1932 Wilhelm von Massow identified it as Dionysus. The beard shows an older man, and the right arm was planned to stretch forward. On a Naxos tour, visitors see the rough body, the bearded head and the start of the feet on a 50 cm plinth. The archaeologist Gruben held that the block was too heavy to move, so it stayed in the quarry.

Near Melanes, a Naxos tour reaches the Kouroi of Flerio. One lies in a village garden and measures 4.7 metres; its lower right leg has broken off but rests beside it. The second, also called the Kouros of Potamia or Kouros of Faranga, lies about halfway up a 300-metre marble outcrop and measures 5.0 metres. Each weighs between 5 and 7 tonnes, and both stayed unfinished because their feet broke during transport.

• Material: Naxian marble is a large-crystal white marble of over 98% calcite, with crystals up to 15 millimetres across.
• Quarries: The ancient quarries lie in the north near Apollonas and in the central region of Melanes, while modern quarrying takes place near Kinidaros.
• Delos link: The 9-metre Colossus of the Naxians, set up on Delos, came from the same quarry as the two Flerio kouroi.
• Museum piece: A Naxos tour that adds the Museum of Naxos sees a smaller unfinished kouros from Flerio on its terrace.

Marble quarrying on Naxos began before 550 BCE, and Naxian marble served for roof tiles at ancient Olympia and on the Athenian Acropolis. A Naxos tour that links Melanes and Apollonas visits two of the ancient quarry areas of the island. The Apollonas figure also shows the method of the time: sculptors shaped the whole body layer by layer with bronze chisels, so every part reached the same stage at once.

What is the Temple of Demeter on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour to the Temple of Demeter reaches a Late Archaic marble temple at Gyroulas, about 1.5 kilometres south of Ano Sangri. Built around 530 BC entirely from Naxian marble, it is one of the earliest Ionic temples and saw partial restoration in 1994.

The site is also known as the Temple of Sangri, after the village of Ano Sangri to the north. Finds from the sanctuary point to a cult of Demeter or of Kore, and there are also signs of a cult of Apollo on the site. The cult and the unusual shape of the building explain why it is also called a telesterion. A Naxos tour to this site sees the ground plan of that sanctuary.

A Naxos tour shows a plan that is almost square, at 13.29 by 12.73 metres, while Archaic Greek temples tend to be elongated. The facade faces south instead of east. The temple has no foundation platform, or crepidoma, and its columns stand without a stylobate. Five unfluted columns in the Samian style form the front, and they show a slight narrowing with height, the reverse of the Archaic and Classical rule.

A roof over the pronaos was the oldest known marble roof in ancient architecture. Seven beams almost four metres long held it, and each curved upward by almost 2 centimetres, giving the whole roof a slight curve. Two doors led into the naos, which a row of five columns divided into two parts. These inner columns rise from 5.4 to 6.46 metres, yet all share a base diameter of 50 centimetres.

In the 6th century AD the temple was largely pulled down, and a Christian basilica with three naves rose on the same spot from the same stone. Nikolaos Kondoleon investigated the ruins in 1949. Vassilis Lambrinoudakis and Gottfried Gruben then excavated the site from 1976 to 1985, in a partnership between the University of Athens and the Technical University of Munich. A Naxos tour today sees the result of that work.

• Restoration: The excavation work led in 1994 to a partial restoration of the temple.
• Site museum: A Naxos tour to Sangri can include the small museum built on the site, which opened in August 2001.
• Curvature: A common curve runs through the whole marble building, so each part was shaped for one place only.

The careful shaping of each part made reconstruction easier, because the measurements of the surviving pieces pointed to their original places. A Naxos tour to Sangri therefore shows a temple partly restored with its own marble parts, beside the site museum. A final publication of the excavations is still in progress, so the study of the sanctuary continues alongside each Naxos tour that stops at Gyroulas.

Which beaches does a Naxos tour visit?

A Naxos tour on the coast visits the beaches of the west and south-west: Agia Anna and Agios Prokopios on the west side, then Plaka, Mikri Vigla with its Parthena and Limanaki shores, Kastraki, and Alyko, where sand dunes and a protected cedar forest line the bays.

The coastline of Naxos measures 91 kilometres, and the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades describes it as almost straight. The island has an ellipsoidal shape, 33 kilometres long and 25 kilometres wide, with an area of 435 square kilometres. The chief harbour of Naxos lies at Chora. Agia Anna, Agios Prokopis and Agiasos appear on the Ephorate’s list of smaller bays, which suit only small boats and not every wind. A Naxos tour along the west coast follows this shoreline south from the town toward the longer sandy stretches.

Agios Prokopios is a seaside village known for its long sandy beaches on the Aegean, and 182 people lived there at the 2021 census. The village itself has a small church, and an annual feast in honour of the saint falls on 8 July. Near the village lies the Red Lake, where flocks of herons rest before they continue their migration to Africa. A Naxos tour that stops here also reaches Stelida, a hill 118 metres high at the western end of the cape, about 3 kilometres south of Chora.

The Ephorate calls Stelida the oldest site on Naxos and the earliest evidence of human activity in the Cyclades. Flint and chert from the hill were worked from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic, from 250,000 to 7000 BC. Excavation work on the southern peak from 2019 to 2021 found a peak sanctuary of the Minoan type, dated to 1600–1550 BC, in a building of 7 by 6 metres. A Naxos tour on this stretch of coast therefore pairs the sand with the oldest layer of island prehistory.

Further south, a Naxos tour reaches Mikri Vigla, a small village whose name means “little lookout”, about 18 kilometres south of the city of Naxos. Its nearby beaches include Parthena, 600 metres long, to the north, and Limanaki to the west, which runs for 3,200 metres as far as the village of Kastraki. In spring and summer 1985, the British School at Athens and the local antiquities service ran a surface survey at Mikri Vigla. The Ephorate lists it among the Middle and Late Cycladic sites of the island.

• Plaka: The village of Tripodes stands on the south-west beach road about 8 kilometres from Chora and Plaka beach, and the fertile plains of Plaka grow Naxos potatoes, vegetables, barley and vines.
• Plaka tower: The Ephorate lists the tower of Plaka, with those of Rina and Cheimarros, among the Classical-Hellenistic sites of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC.
• Kastraki: A Naxos tour to Kastraki reaches one of the coastal places, with Grotta, Apollonas and Spedos, where the greatest activity of the Neolithic and Archaic periods on Naxos is observed.
• Alyko: This beach on the south-west coast lies about 17 kilometres from Chora, with small bays framed by cliffs, sandy shores and a hectare of protected cedar forest.

Alyko marks the southern end of the beach route on a Naxos tour of the west coast. Its shallow water deepens step by step, which suits swimming and snorkelling, and graffiti-covered ruins stand near the sand. A Naxos tour that links the beaches moves from the herons of the Red Lake near Agios Prokopios to the farm plains of Plaka, the long sands of Mikri Vigla and the cedar dunes of Alyko, with ancient sites close to each stop.

What is the Cave of Zeus on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour to the Cave of Zeus, also called the Cave of Zas, reaches a natural cave on the western slope of Mount Zas. Greek myth says the young Zeus grew up there, hidden from his father Cronus, after his birth in a cave on Crete.

In the Theogony of Hesiod, Cronus swallows each of his children at birth, because a prophecy warns that one of them is destined to overthrow him. Zeus is the youngest of the six, and his mother Rhea seeks a plan to save him. Later writers set his birth in a cave on Crete, where nymphs feed him on the milk of the she-goat Amalthea. The Kouretes beat their spears on their shields so that Cronus cannot hear the infant cry. A Naxos tour picks up the story from there.

The Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades gives the Naxian side of the story. Zeus was born in the Idaean Cave on Crete, but he “became a man” on Naxos, away from the envy and wrath of Cronus, and the highest mountain of the island carries his name. In the history of Naxos told by Agathosthenes, the god spent his childhood in this cave. Two inscriptions cut into the native rock define his sanctuary as the Boundary Stone of Zeus Milousios. A Naxos tour sees the mountain the inscriptions mark.

The cave also enters the story of Dionysus, the god worshipped above all others on Naxos, an island that the Ephorate notes is called “god-nurturing”. Naxian mythographers held that Dionysus was born on the island to Semele, daughter of Cadmus. Zeus handed his upbringing to three Naxian nymphs, Philia, Kleidi and Koroni. They raised him in the cave of Zas, or in the Kako Spelio of Koroni by another account. On a Naxos tour, one cave on Mount Zas therefore links the childhood of a father and of his son.

Archaeologists found no residue from crop processing, so they suggest the cave was not a year-round home but a shelter for herding animals during the driest part of the year. The Ephorate counts the cave among the earliest natural monuments of the island, since it sheltered Naxians of Neolithic times before the start of the 5th millennium. A systematic investigation by the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology, under the direction of K. Zachos, set out to save that evidence from illegal digging. A Naxos tour sees the result of that work.

• Cretan rival: Mount Ida in Crete, sacred to Rhea, holds the Idaean Cave, while other legends place the birth of Zeus in the Psychro Cave on the Lasithi Plateau.
• Idaean Cave: Minoans and Hellenes both venerated the Cretan cave, and by Greek times it had been rededicated to Zeus.
• Research: Konstantinos L. Zachos published a study titled “Zas Cave on Naxos and the Role of Caves in the Aegean Late Neolithic” in 1999.
• Seals: A later paper by Zachos and Angelika Dousougli examined Early Bronze Age sealings from the Cave of Zas, a stop on a Naxos tour of the interior.
• Island name: Homer mentions “Dia”, and Károly Kerényi explains that this name, meaning “heavenly” or “divine”, passed to Naxos itself.

The Cave of Zas ties Naxos to the oldest stories of the Greek gods and to the earliest human traces in the island interior. A Naxos tour to Mount Zas links the Cretan birth of Zeus with his Naxian childhood, the Dionysus legend and the herders who used the cave in the dry months. For a Naxos tour, the site joins myth and archaeology inside one natural chamber, high above the farms and villages of Filoti.

What does the Tragea valley show on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour through the Tragea valley, written Tragaia in the sources, reaches the centre of the island around the village of Halki. The area shows Byzantine churches such as Panagia Protothronos and Saint George Diasoritis, and farm villages such as Filoti, where olives lead the crops.

Tragaia is an inland area of Naxos centred on the village of Halki, which the sources also call Chalkeio and, at times, simply Tragaia. In 1840 the ten municipalities of the province of Naxos fell to seven, and a municipality of Tragaia, with its seat in Chalkeio, took in the village of Filoti. That municipality of Tragaia was abolished in 1912, when settlements with more than 300 residents and a primary school became communities. A Naxos tour through Tragea crosses this old administrative unit in the middle of the island.

The Church of Panagia Protothronos, whose name means “Panagia of the First Throne”, stands in Halki and honours the Annunciation. It appears to have begun as an early Christian basilica, of which only the synthronon and the bishop’s throne survive. In middle Byzantine times it became a transitional cross-in-square church, and a domed narthex was added later. Its first layer of frescoes, from the 7th century, shows apostles, while a second layer of crosses dates to the 9th-century Iconoclast period. A Naxos tour sees frescoes of different periods.

About 600 metres from Halki stands the Church of Saint George Diasoritis, built and decorated in the 11th century. It follows the cross-in-square plan, with a dome on four built piers, a type rare on Naxos. Christ Pantocrator appears in the dome, and the cross arms show scenes from the Twelve Great Feasts. A second painting layer from the 13th century covers parts of the apse and the lower walls. On a Naxos tour, a tour leader can point out the dedicatory inscription of John the Protospatharios in the narthex.

That inscription matters beyond the church. It names a high-ranking Byzantine official and points to the region as an administrative centre that controlled the hinterland of the island. In Byzantine times the capital of Naxos stood at the southern fortress of Apalyres, and Saracen raids struck the island, above all during the Emirate of Crete, from 824 to 961. Filoti grew from the 7th to the 10th century as people left the coast in fear of pirate raids. A Naxos tour in Tragea sees the result of this move inland.

• Olives: On a Naxos tour, Filoti, part of the municipality of Tragaia from 1840 to 1912, produces figs, grapes and wine, but above all olives pressed into olive oil.
• Lioiri: One of the three settlements of Filoti carries the name Lioiri because the site was once an olive grove.
• Old press: A Naxos tour in Filoti passes the Women’s Association, which works from the old olive press of the village church and makes spoon sweets.
• Ancient oil: Jugs over 4,000 years old with remains of olive oil came from a tomb on the island of Naxos.
• Frescoes: Traces of Muslim artistic influence appear in frescoes of the 10th century on Naxos.

Naxos was known for its agriculture and animal husbandry in Byzantine times, as in antiquity, and the 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi recorded extensive cattle raising on the island. A Naxos tour through Tragea links that farm economy with the churches around Halki, whose inscriptions name a bishop, a protospatharios and a count. A book by Giorgos Anomeritis calls the district the Byzantine Park of Tragaia, Naxos. For a Naxos tour, Tragea adds the farm interior to the coast and the mountain.

Which Byzantine churches does a Naxos tour see?

A Naxos tour of the Byzantine churches visits the interior of the island and its frescoes from the 7th to the 13th centuries. Panagia Protothronos stands in Halki in Tragaia, Saint George Diasoritis stands about 600 metres from Halki, and Panagia Drosiani stands in Moni village.

Under the Byzantine Empire, Naxos belonged to the thema of the Aegean Sea, set up in the middle of the 9th century. Saracen raiders struck the island while the Emirate of Crete existed, from 824 to 961, and Naxos paid tribute to them at times. In this period villages moved from the coast to higher ground, such as the plateau of Traghea, also written Tragaia. Frescoes of the 10th century on Naxos show traces of Muslim artistic influence. A Naxos tour to the churches enters this inland district of Naxos.

Panagia Protothronos, meaning Panagia of the First Throne, stands in Halki in Tragaia. The church is dedicated to the Annunciation and is thought to have begun as an early Christian basilica. From that phase only the synthronon and the episcopal throne in the semicircular sanctuary conch survive. In the middle Byzantine period the building became a transitional cross-in-square church. A domed narthex came later, flanked by the chapel of Saint Akindynos to the north and a vaulted room to the south. A Naxos tour sees each phase in one building.

Inside, earlier paintings were detached and repositioned once the oldest layer had been removed, so frescoes from different periods are visible side by side. The first layer dates to the 7th century: apostles line the bottom of the conch, and Saint Isidore appears beside the window. A second layer of crosses in the arcades dates to the Iconoclast period of the 9th century. Two layers in the dome date to 1052 and 1056. On a Naxos tour, Saints George, Nicholas, Dimitrios and Theodore in the eastern section date to 1052.

Saint George Diasoritis stands about 600 metres from Halki, which is also known as Tragaia. It was built and decorated in the 11th century as a cross-in-square church, with a dome on four built piers and a lower narthex to the west. This type is rare on Naxos. Barrel vaults cover the cross arms, and the narthex is divided into three bays. Two arcosolia, with empty tombs, sit opposite each other in the north and south walls. A Naxos tour finds stone mouldings that divide its frescoes into three registers.

• Dome: A Naxos tour inside Saint George Diasoritis finds Christ Pantocrator in the dome, with full-length figures in the drum around him.
• Apse: On a Naxos tour, the apse shows the Virgin and Child, standing hierarchs and Saint George framed like an icon, with his parents in roundels on either side.
• Feasts: On a Naxos tour, the cross arms carry scenes from the cycle of the Twelve Great Feasts, such as the Nativity and the Baptism.
• Agia Mamas: This church on Naxos is another 11th-century example of the cross-in-square type, alongside Protothronos and Diasoritis.
• Panagia Drosiani: The church stands in the village of Moni, and a valley lies between Moni and Potamia.

In Diasoritis, a second layer of the 13th century covers the half dome of the apse and the lower registers of the walls. The narthex, which has a funerary character, holds two or three layers, with the Second Coming as its main theme. A dedicatory inscription of John the Protospatharios sits in its southeast corner. On a Naxos tour, this text of a high Byzantine official marks the region as an important administrative centre for the hinterland of the island.

What are the towers on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour passes towers from the Venetian and Ottoman centuries, when feudal lords held the land as fiefs. Examples include the Barozzi Tower in Filoti, the Bazeos Tower, a 17th-century tower built as a monastery, the Belonia tower and towers in Kato Sangri and Apeiranthos.

Marco Sanudo, the first duke, rebuilt a strong fortress on Naxos and divided the island into 56 provinces. He shared them out as fiefs among the leaders of his men, who were largely autonomous and paid their own expenses. The Naxiotes resisted from a base at the inland fortress of Apalyros, which fell after a siege of five or six weeks. Other feudal families came later, the Barozzi in the 14th century and the Querini in the 15th. A Naxos tour to the towers starts from this feudal order.

In the 14th century, raids from the Anatolian Turkish beyliks, chiefly the Aydınids, struck Naxos. Raids are recorded in 1324 and 1326, and in 1341 Umur of Aydın carried off 6,000 people and imposed a tribute. After the Crispo family overthrew the heirs of Sanudo in 1383, social order and agriculture decayed and piracy became dominant. The Ottomans first attacked the island in 1416, but the Sultans recognized Venetian overlordship for an annual tribute. A Naxos tour to the towers places them within this record of raids.

In a period of transition, the Barozzi family took over the fief of Filoti. In 1620 Zorzeto Barozzi bought a tower-like mansion in the centre of the village from a certain Tzuane Tagari, and it has carried the name Barozzi Tower since then. Zorzeto was an heir of Giacomo IV Crispo, the last Venetian duke of Naxos. His son Jacob held the fief from 1648 to 1676 and came to occupy 71% of the land. A Naxos tour in Filoti stops at this tower in the middle of the village.

The Bazeos Tower dates from the 17th century and was built as a monastery. In 2009, the Greek artist Nikos Alexiou curated an exhibition there of his own collection, with works by 70 modern and contemporary artists. The tower itself became an art subject in his video productions of that time. The set of images that represents Naxos includes a tower in Kato Sangri next to the Temple of Apollo and the Castle of Naxos. A Naxos tour also meets towers in Filoti, in Apeiranthos and the Belonia tower.

• Archive: Jacob Barozzi collected documents from 1372 to 1667 and named the collection “My hegemony in Filoti”.
• Church claim: The lord presented the church of Panagia in Filoti, with the churches of Agia Paraskevi and Agios Ioannis, as his own property.
• End of privileges: A Naxos tour dates the end of the feudal era to 1721, when the privileges of the feudal lords were abolished.
• School: A Naxos tour in Filoti passes the site that Fragiskos Barozzi donated in 1833 for the first elementary school of the village.
• Last heir: In 1917 Michael Markopoulos, the last heir of the feudal property, sold the remaining estates.

The feudal estates of Naxos outlasted the duchy itself. Under Ottoman administration, the Barozzi lord still presented Filoti as his property, in the manner of the Venetian era. Conflicts with the villagers peaked in the decade from 1680 to 1690. Turkish influence on the island stayed insignificant. Ottoman rule on Naxos lasted until 1821, when the island joined the Greek War of Independence with its fleet. A Naxos tour to the towers follows this history from fief to free village.

What is the sanctuary of Dionysus on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour to the sanctuary of Dionysus reaches Yria, a site on a marsh below the village of Glynado, about three kilometres from Naxos town. Excavations there revealed not one but five temples, one over another, that go back at least to the 9th century BC.

Naxos was one of the cult centres of Dionysus in ancient Greece, and its sanctuary ranked with the temple in Thebes as one of his main temples. Dionysus, the god of wine, festivities and the primal energy of life, was the protector of the island. The name Dia passed to Naxos itself, as it was widely held to be the nuptial isle of the god. The site at Yria served a fertility cult as early as 1400 BC, so a Naxos tour here meets a long record of worship.

The village of Glynado, also spelled Glinado, stands on a hilltop 8 kilometres from Chora and belongs to the municipal unit of Naxos. The 2021 census counted 743 residents, a number that rises in the summer months. Its people live mainly from farming in the fertile plain below, known as Leivadia. The site at Yria has been under excavation since 1986, and work in the late 1990s showed that it held five temples, not one. A Naxos tour follows these phases in order, from the oldest building to the last.

The first temple was a building of 5 by 10 metres, with its entrance to the southeast. Three wooden columns held up a wooden structure covered by mud bricks. In the middle stood an eschara, an altar with Mycenaean features, which suggests that worship began before this building. A Naxos tour then meets the second phase, from the middle of the 8th century BC. It looked similar to the first but covered a larger area, about 11 by 15 metres, with three lines of five columns on marble bases.

Early in the 7th century BC, a longer temple of 11 by 17 metres rose, partly on the walls of the second. Its entrance gained a peristyle, one of the first known in the ancient Greek world, with a terracotta frieze. In the middle of the 6th century BC, the fourth temple, 13 by 25 metres, covered all the earlier ones. Its side and back walls were granite and its roof frame wood. The rest was marble, from the Ionic columns of the prostasis to the tiles of the roof.

• Benches: In the second temple the eschara stayed in place, and benches were added along the walls.
• Third temple: A Naxos tour notes that two inner lines of three columns each stood on marble bases here, and the middle space gained importance.
• Drainage: The roof of the third temple had marble pipes for water, and the eschara inside had a lantern on top.
• Cycladic doors: The front wall of the fourth temple held Cycladic doors, and its interior columns were marble.
• Church: The final phase of use on the site was a church, built in the 5th century AD.

If the temple was still in use by the 4th century AD, it closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, when Christian emperors issued edicts against non-Christian worship. A Naxos tour to Yria therefore traces a single site from an altar of Mycenaean type to a marble Ionic temple and a Christian church. The sanctuary lies about three kilometres from Naxos town, below the village of Glynado, so a Naxos tour combines it with Chora.

What does the Archaeological Museum show on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour that enters the Archaeological Museum of Naxos sees finds from the Late Neolithic period up to Early Christian times, from 5300 BC to the 5th century AD, inside a Venetian building in Naxos town that once housed a Jesuit school and later a commercial school.

The museum occupies a Venetian building in Naxos town that is now a declared historical monument. Builders raised it between 1600 and 1800, in the Frankish period, when the island enjoyed a time of prosperity. The structure stands five storeys high and follows the course of the Frankish fortification wall, so two of the old wall towers became part of its fabric. On a Naxos tour, the building itself works as the first exhibit, since its outer walls still trace the line of the medieval defences of the upper town.

The building was designed to house a school of the Jesuits, and that school was founded in the 17th century. Later, in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, the same rooms held the commercial school of the island, and Nikos Kazantzakis studied there as a pupil. The Archaeological Service then took over the building and turned it into the museum that a Naxos tour enters today. The climb to this address therefore leads to a former Jesuit school as well as to a collection of ancient finds.

The core of the collections dates from the Early Cycladic periods, from 3200 to 2300 BC. The marble figurines from this era come from Naxos itself and from the nearby islands of Kato Kouphonisi and Keros. The Ministry of Culture ranks this figurine collection second only to the one held by the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. On a Naxos tour, these marble pieces connect the town with the cemeteries and settlements of the third millennium BC, both on the island and on its small island neighbours to the south-east.

The displays then move forward in time from the Cycladic age. Stirrup jars and other grave goods from the Late Mycenaean period came from chamber tombs and other graves at the Kamini mound and at Aplomata. Vase collections follow from the Mycenaean period, in the late 2nd millennium BC, and from the Geometric period, in the 9th and 8th centuries BC. A smaller area covers the Geometric period and the later finds, with sculpture from every period of the island’s history shown to each Naxos tour group inside the museum.

• Archaic to Hellenistic: Pottery and terracotta figurines represent the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods, from the 7th to the 1st century BC.
• Roman glass: A Naxos tour sees a large collection of glass vases from the Roman period, the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD.
• Archaic sculpture: A small group of important works represents the Archaic sculpture of the island.
• Excavations: The finds came to light in excavations that have continued on Naxos since the Second World War.
• Sites: The finds on a Naxos tour come from Grotta, Aplomata, Pithos in Chora, Melanes, Sangri, Iria, Tsikalario, Panormos and Korphi t’Aroniou.

The museum also explains why Naxos kept a strong and continuous cultural presence in Greece from the end of the 4th millennium BC to the present day. The Ministry of Culture links this record to a rich island with land suited to farming and stock-raising and with good natural harbours. A Naxos tour that starts in the museum sees the finds in one building before it travels out to the villages, quarries and coastal sites where they came to light.

How does Cycladic culture shape a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour traces Cycladic culture, the Bronze Age civilisation of the Cyclades from about 3100 BC to about 1000 BC. Naxos was an important centre of this culture, and two of its sites gave their names to an early phase and to the commonest type of figurine.

Archaeologists divide Cycladic chronology into three major sequences: Early, Middle and Late Cycladic. The Early Cycladic period began around 3100 BC, the Middle Cycladic followed around 2000 BC, and by the end of the Late Cycladic, around 1000 BC, the Cycladic and Minoan civilisations had largely converged. Naxos has been inhabited without a break since at least the fourth millennium BC, and the study of its place names asserts that the island was never abandoned. A Naxos tour therefore crosses ground with a long and unbroken record of human settlement.

The first phase carries a Naxian name. Colin Renfrew coined the term Grotta-Pelos culture after two sites, Grotta on Naxos and Pelos on Milos. It marks the start of Cycladic culture, from about 3300 BC to about 2700 BC, and other archaeologists call the same span Early Cycladic I. Grotta is the northern beach area of Naxos town, named from the Venetian word grota, meaning cave, after small caves under the cliff at Aplomata. A Naxos tour in the town reaches this shoreline on foot from the old quarters.

Naxos first flourished in the Early Cycladic II period, about 2700 to 2300 BC. With the small islets nearby, it grew into one of the main commercial and cultural centres of that age, according to the Ministry of Culture. This phase is the Keros-Syros culture, and its cemeteries on Naxos include Aplomata and Spedos. Its trade reached from the Greek mainland to Crete and Asia Minor, and on Crete local artists copied the imported Cycladic figurines. A Naxos tour places the island near the centre of this early sea network.

The marble figurines are the best-known works of the culture. The commonest kind shows a single full-length female figure with the arms folded across the front, the right arm held below the left. Apart from a sharply defined nose, the faces are smooth, and traces show that they once carried paint. The Spedos variety, named after an Early Cycladic cemetery on Naxos, has the widest distribution and the greatest longevity of all the types. A Naxos tour meets examples that range from 8 centimetres to 1.5 metres in height.

• Frying pans: These flat circular disks with a handle date from about 2700 to 2200 BC, and their purpose remains unknown.
• Metal: Daggers, chisels, tweezers and fishhooks appear as grave goods in Keros-Syros settlements, along with brooches of bronze and silver.
• Burials: The marble figures seen on a Naxos tour have all come from graves, and a number show signs of repair from use in life.
• Research: Christos Tsountas investigated burial sites on the islands in 1898–99 and coined the term “Cycladic civilization”.
• Looting: One estimate holds that around 90% of the known figures were looted or removed from their sites without scientific record.

In the Late Bronze Age, the palace culture of Crete rose and the Cycladic islands became less significant, but Naxos, Kea and Delos stood as exceptions. The Mycenaean town of Naxos, around 1300 BC, covered the area from today’s city to the islet of Palatia. A Naxos tour that links the museum, the Grotta shore and Palatia follows the outline of this Bronze Age town, and each Naxos tour stop in Chora sits on ground used since the Cycladic age.

What are the emery mines on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour to the emery mines heads to the north-east of the island, where the villages of Koronos, Keramoti, Apeiranthos and Komiaki produce the rock. Until the early 1980s, emery travelled from the mountain by aerial cableway to the port of Moutsouna on the east coast.

Emery, also called corundite, is a dark granular rock that serves to make an abrasive powder. It consists largely of corundum, an aluminium oxide, mixed with other minerals such as hercynite, magnetite and rutile. Its colour is black or dark grey, and it is less dense than corundum, with a specific gravity between 3.5 and 3.8. No single Mohs hardness applies, because corundum rates 9, certain spinel-group minerals sit near 8 and magnetite near 6. A Naxos tour to the mining villages shows the source of this rock.

Emery mining on the eastern side of Naxos goes back well over two thousand years. Pliny the Elder mentioned it in his Natural History, book XXXVII, chapter 32. In the Cycladic period, the island already exported emery to other islands. Later, in the Archaic period, emery and marble counted among the resources that helped Naxos become one of the leading Greek city-states, with control over nearby islands. For a Naxos tour, the rock links the Bronze Age trade of the island with the wealth of the later Archaic city.

The emery villages sit on the high ground of the north-east, and Koronos is one of them. It lies on the north-east slopes of Koronion Oros, the second tallest mountain on Naxos, and at 630 metres it is the second highest village on the island. The group is known as the Smiridohoria, the emery-producing villages, and a Naxos tour of the north-east passes through them. Keramoti, a mountain village, is part of the Drymalia municipal unit and sits 2 kilometres south-west of Koronos and 12 kilometres east of Naxos town.

Moutsouna is a small seaside village on the eastern coast, about 39 kilometres from the island capital and 11 kilometres from Apeiranthos. Its bay is fairly open and its port facilities are limited. Until the early 1980s, boats loaded the emery there for export. Miners cut the rock up the mountain, and an aerial cableway carried it down to the port. A Naxos tour to the village still finds the cableway and the remains of the transfer station in Moutsouna, beside the open bay of the old emery port.

• Administration: Moutsouna, the coastal stop of a Naxos tour to the emery area, belongs to Apeiranthos and has a road connection to it.
• Population: The Naxos tour stop at Moutsouna had 65 inhabitants in 1960 and 84 at the last census.
• World supply: Turkey and Greece are the main suppliers of the world’s emery, and together they produced about 17,500 tons in 1987.
• Recent output: In 2010, Greece produced 2,000 tonnes of emery and Turkey 6,000 tonnes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
• Uses: Crushed emery, known as black sand, serves on emery boards and emery cloth and as a traction aid in asphalt and tarmac.

Naxos was once the main source of this industrially important rock, but demand fell after sintered carbide and oxide materials came into use as abrasives. In the United States, the main use of emery is in wear-resistant floors and pavements, and large tonnages go to Asia for grinding rice. A Naxos tour that links the Smiridohoria with the old cableway at Moutsouna follows the route of the rock from the mountain villages down to the sea on the east coast.

Which islands does a Naxos tour reach by boat?

A Naxos tour by boat heads south-east to the Small Cyclades, also called the Lesser Cyclades, a group of 32 islands and rocks. The main islands are Ano Koufonisi, Kato Koufonisi, Irakleia, Schoinoussa, Donousa and Keros. Only four of them are inhabited.

The Small Cyclades sit inside the wider Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea, to the south-east of Naxos. Irakleia is the largest island in the group, with an area of 18 square kilometres. Ano Koufonisi has the largest population, with 399 residents in the 2011 census. The islets of Ano and Kato Antikeri belong to Amorgos municipality. All the other islands belong to the municipality of Naxos and Lesser Cyclades, which has its seat in Naxos town.

A Naxos tour to Koufonisia reaches a small island complex with three main islands: Ano Koufonisi, Kato Koufonisi and Keros. Ano Koufonisi covers 5.8 square kilometres and had 391 residents in 2021. Fishing is the main local work, and compared to its population the island has one of the biggest fishing fleets in Greece. A white windmill stands on the east side of the port. Kato Koufonisi is almost uninhabited, and its small church of Panagia sits on a jetty on top of ancient ruins.

No one lives on Keros, which is protected as an archaeological site. Excavations there in the 20th century produced a large number of ancient Cycladic art pieces, and the island gave its name to the Keros-Syros culture of the Early Cycladic II period. Irakleia lies between Naxos and Ios, and a Naxos tour to the island lands at its port, Agios Georgios. Its hilltop village is Panagia. The biggest caves in the Cyclades are on Irakleia, and its Bousoules rock paintings date from about 5,000 years ago.

Schoinoussa lies south of Naxos, between Irakleia and Koufonisia. It is the fourth largest island of the group and had 229 residents in 2021. Its three settlements are Chora, Mesaria and the port of Mersini, and the island holds ancient Greek and Roman ruins and a small medieval castle. A Naxos tour to Donousa, also spelled Donoussa, heads to the easternmost island of the group, 16 kilometres east of Naxos. Its main port and capital is Agios Stavros, and 213 people lived on the island in 2021.

• Irakleia: The largest island of the Small Cyclades is reached by ferries from Athens, Naxos and Paros.
• Ano Koufonisi: Its Chora on the south-west coast holds examples of Cycladic architecture.
• Kato Koufonisi: The island covers 4.3 square kilometres, and its small port takes only fishing and tourist boats.
• Schoinoussa: Its name derives either from the ancient name Echinousa or from a Venetian nobleman named Schinoza.
• Donousa: The island lies about 25 kilometres north of Amorgos and rises to 385 metres at its highest point.

The Small Cyclades have been inhabited since the Stone Age and flourished in the early Bronze Age, when the Cycladic culture appeared. Pirates raided them in medieval and modern times. From the 11th century, the Hozoviotissa Monastery on Amorgos held the bulk of the islands as property. A Naxos tour to these islands links sea travel with sites from the earliest Cycladic period to the era of Venetian and Turkish rule.

When is the best season for a Naxos tour?

The Naxos tour season with the driest weather runs from June to September. In Naxos town, average highs reach 25.9 °C in June and 27.1 °C in July, rain days stay under two a month, and the meltemi wind peaks in July and August.

Naxos has both a Mediterranean climate and a hot semi-arid climate, depending on the location. Inland areas stand higher, so they are wetter and cooler in winter. A Naxos tour to Apeiranthos, at 600 metres, meets a January average high of 9 °C, against 14.4 °C in Naxos town. Mount Zas, the highest peak in the Cyclades, traps clouds and brings more rain. Unlike the rest of the Cyclades, Naxos has fertile soil and a good water supply.

Data from the Hellenic National Meteorological Service set out the averages for Naxos town. July and August have average highs of 27.1 °C and 27.0 °C, and average lows of 22.0 °C and 22.2 °C. The wet months run from October to March. December is the wettest month with 69.0 mm of rain, while July has 0.9 mm. A Naxos tour in high summer therefore meets dry, warm days.

The meltemi, also known as the etesian wind, is a strong, dry north wind of the Aegean Sea. It blows from late spring to mid-September, with its highest frequency in July and August. It is strongest in the afternoon and tends to drop at night, though at times it lasts for days without a break. Its northerly air tempers the summer heat and keeps Aegean temperatures lower than those of the Ionian Sea or mainland Greece.

When the meltemi reaches force 7 to 8 on the Beaufort scale, a share of yachts and a large share of inter-island ferries cannot sail, and the wind rises without warning even in clear weather. A Naxos tour by boat to the Small Cyclades depends on these conditions. On land, the same wind makes Naxos a windy place for windsurfing and kitesurfing. Seven sports clubs on the island offer both sports and other water activities.

• Driest months: June, July and August each record less than 2.5 mm of rain in Naxos town.
• Warmest months: July and August have mean temperatures of 25.1 °C and 25.0 °C.
• Coolest nights: February has the lowest average low in Naxos town, at 9.4 °C.
• Record heat: The highest temperature on record in Naxos town is 37.9 °C, set in July.
• Small islands: Donousa has a hot semi-arid climate, with an average annual temperature of around 19.2 °C.

April and October sit on either side of the dry season. Naxos town records an average high of 18.7 °C in April and 21.9 °C in October, with 6.0 and 5.5 rain days. Both months fall outside the July and August peak of the meltemi, so a Naxos tour in spring or autumn meets cooler days and a lower chance of strong north wind.

What do travelers ask about a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour raises recurring questions about the myth of Ariadne and Dionysus, the foods the island produces, the sea and air routes to Naxos, and the option to pair the island with a visit to Delos on another day.

Which myth links a Naxos tour to Ariadne and Dionysus?

In Greek myth, Theseus left Ariadne on Naxos after she helped him kill the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth. Dionysus found her there and fell in love with her, and in Hesiod’s account he married her on Naxos. He set her wedding crown in the sky as the constellation Corona Borealis, and Naxos held Ariadneia festivals in her honour.

Which local foods are part of a Naxos tour?

Naxos is known for Arseniko Naxou cheese, potatoes, Naxian honey and Kitron. Kitron is a citron liqueur made from the fruit and leaves of the citron tree, and the first distillery opened in 1896 in Halki. Graviera of Naxos is a hard cheese made from 80–100% cow’s milk, and it holds EU protected designation of origin status.

How is Naxos reached for a Naxos tour?

Ferries link the port of Naxos town with the neighbouring islands and with Piraeus at Athens, about 180 kilometres away. By air, a Naxos tour begins at Naxos Island National Airport, which opened in 1992 near Agios Prokopios, 3 kilometres from Naxos City. It has daily flights to and from Athens International Airport.

Can a Naxos tour pair with a Delos tour on another day?

Yes. Delos lies near Mykonos, and the name Cyclades refers to the islands that form a circle around it. Shortly before 600 BC, the people of Naxos dedicated the Terrace of the Lions on Delos to Apollo, and seven of its original lions remain. A Naxos tour and a Delos tour on separate days cover both islands.

Featured photo: Manfred Werner (Tsui), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.