Naxos Tour

A Naxos tour explores Naxos, the big green island at the centre of the Cyclades, with its marble villages, Venetian past and mountain farms. The tour is one of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville.

This post covers the island’s rocks and early towns, its colony in Sicily, ancient wars, its water, the Venetian Duchy, Catholic Naxos and the years after 1821.

Famous Naxians, saints, dialect, music, art, village houses, wildlife, dunes, footpaths, the island’s living, museums, the best months, early travellers, village sizes and common questions come last. The sections include Naxos tours that can be booked online.

What is a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour covers the island of Naxos in the Cyclades. It had 19,597 permanent residents at the 2021 census. It measures about 32.5 km long and 21.7 km wide. It lies 103 nautical miles from the port of Piraeus.

The island sits inside the municipality of Naxos and Lesser Cyclades. That municipality covers 495.867 km² and was formed in 2011 by merging six former municipalities. Its six units are Donousa, Drymalia, Irakleia, Koufonisia, Naxos town and Schoinoussa.

On a Naxos tour, the wider regional unit also matters. It covers 622.1 km² and takes in Amorgos as well. It counted 22,539 residents at the 2021 census.

Ancient writers gave the island a string of names. Pliny the Elder wrote that it was called the Island of Dionysus, for its fertile vineyards. Others, he adds, called it Little Sicily or Callipolis.

Pliny gave Naxos a circuit of 75 miles and called it half as large again as Paros. Other ancient authors used the names Tragia, Dionysias and Lipara.

On a Naxos tour, the name itself has a story. Tradition says Carians from Asia Minor, led by a chief named Naxos, gave the island its name. Ottoman Turkish later called it Nakşa.

• Koronos: This mountain village counted 395 residents at the 2021 census.
• Mesi: The mountain village fell from roughly 180 residents in 1955 to 93 in 2021.
• Keramoti: At 460 m, it counted only 56 residents in 2021.
• Province: The old province of Naxos covered the same ground and was abolished in 2006.

On a Naxos tour, the island and its small neighbours form one municipality. Amorgos joins them only in the wider regional unit.

Which rocks shape a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour crosses what geologists call the fullest structural cross-section of the Cyclades. At its heart lies a migmatite dome, rock that partly melted deep underground. Partial melting of the Naxos crust began before 20.7 million years ago.

The crust under the Cyclades is about 35 km thick. The Hellenides and Taurides are the mountain belts of mainland Greece and Turkey. Beneath them, the crust reaches 50 to 55 km.

On a Naxos tour, the rock ages read like a clock. Zircon rims about 50 million years old show the rocks were first buried deep in the Eocene. Rims grown during melting range from 20.7 to 16.8 million years old, so melting came in pulses.

Granite bodies on Naxos date from 15.4 to 11.3 million years ago. The bulk of the magma came around 12 million years ago. Zircons from the migmatite dome are chiefly late Paleozoic, so much older basement rock lies inside it.

Above the detachment, the upper unit holds low-grade marble, schist and serpentinite, capped by younger sediments. West of the dome the middle unit is about 1 km thick. East of it, the unit reaches about 4 km.

Argon and rubidium-strontium ages fall from 45 million years in the blueschists to 7 million in migmatites. Sedimentary basins from the Oligocene to the Upper Pliocene meet the metamorphic rocks along low-angle detachments.

On a Naxos tour, Mount Koronos rises at the core of the migmatite dome. It sits inside a downfold of marble. Jansen and Schuiling first proposed in 1976 that the dome formed as molten migmatite rose upward.

• Moutsouna: A fault at the port separates greenschist from serpentinized peridotite, a piece of old ocean floor.
• Fossils: Nummulite fossils in Moutsouna pebbles show a shallow sea there in the Palaeogene.
• Melanes: North of the village, a kilometre-scale landslide of marble and schist rests on younger sediments.
• Stelida: The granodiorite under its fault contact holds pseudotachylytes, a type of fault rock.

At Naxos port, hot fluids leached the granodiorite into clay-rich zones crossed by barite-bearing veins.

How did early Naxos grow on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour in Chora walks over Grotta, the island’s early town by the sea. Excavations there show Neolithic life around the 5th millennium BC. In the 1980s, digs under Mitropoleos Square found traces of the Mycenaean city of Grotta.

Grotta-Pelos pottery of 3200 to 3000 BC turned up at Grotta. Yet no sign of an organised village from then has appeared. Scholars have proposed Grotta-Aplomata as one of four main sea-trade hubs of the Early Cycladic Keros-Syros culture.

On a Naxos tour, Aplomata hill has its own record. Only Aplomata and Panagia on Paros have given longer Early Cycladic obsidian blades than Agrilia on Koufonisi. In the Middle Cycladic period, the Kastro hill was the acropolis of a town that included lower Grotta.

A paved street of the 15th century BC linked the two ports of Naxos. Massive buildings with white plastered floors line that street, possibly public buildings. Under the square, part of the Mycenaean defensive wall survives in good condition.

Small pottery workshops with dyeing equipment and furnaces also came to light under the square. In the Geometric period the site became a place of worship. Late Roman houses built above it later saved its tomb of Naxian notables.

On a Naxos tour, the end of the Bronze Age is a dramatic chapter. Around 1150 to 1090 BC, Grotta grew unusually rich, and its graves show contacts across a wide area. Vases with stylised octopus decoration mark that phase, and the dead were now cremated.

• Destruction: Around 1090 to 1065 BC Grotta was destroyed. A new group of people seems to have settled Naxos.
• Cemetery: In the Geometric period, 900 to 800 BC, the old Mycenaean town at Grotta became a cemetery.
• Alonakia: A Geometric cemetery of the 9th to 8th century BC lies below Apano Kastro. A path leads there from Tsikalario.
• Menhir: A 3 m upright stone there is thought to be one of a kind in south-east Europe.

The circular tombs at Alonakia held pottery, gold jewellery, lances and burned fruit.

How did Naxos found a Sicilian town on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour has a namesake in Sicily. Ancient writers agree that Naxos in Sicily was the oldest of all Greek colonies on that island. It was founded a year before Syracuse. The settlers sailed under Apollo Archegetes.

The historian Ephorus named Theocles, also called Thucles, as the leader of the colony. He was an Athenian by birth. Thucydides leaves Theocles out and describes the town as a purely Chalcidic colony.

On a Naxos tour, the Sicilian altar is a striking detail. An altar to Apollo Archegetes stood outside the town. Envoys on sacred missions to or from Greece offered sacrifice there. The custom lasted long after the town fell.

The scholar Malkin calls the altar a ritualistic point of departure for Greeks leaving Sicily. Within six years, settlers from the colony founded Leontini, modern Lentini, in 730 BC.

The town stood on Cape Schisò, a low rocky headland made by an ancient lava flow. Its walls, built in the mid-6th century BC, stood up to 8 m high. A marble sacred stone found in 1977 carries a dedication to the goddess Enyo. It is written in the script of the Aegean Naxos.

On a Naxos tour, the end of the colony is a hard story. Naxos backed the Athenian expedition of 415 BC. In 403 BC Dionysius of Syracuse took the town through the treachery of its general Procles. He sold all the people as slaves and gave the land to the Siculi.

The 5th century BC was turbulent. Hippocrates, ruler of Gela, took the town in 492 or 491 BC. Hieron of Syracuse later moved its people to Leontini. The town was rebuilt about 470 BC on a grid plan. It is one of the best preserved in the Greek west.

• Athenian fleet: In 415 BC it landed at Naxos first after crossing the straits.
• Tauromenium: About 396 BC the Siculi settled on nearby Mount Taurus, the start of modern Taormina.
• Exiles: In 358 BC Andromachus, father of the historian Timaeus, gathered the Naxian exiles at Tauromenium.
• Giardini Naxos: The modern town on the site means Naxos Gardens. It lies between Cape Taormina and Cape Schisò.

Which wars reached a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour recalls the siege of 499 BC, the opening act of the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus suggests Naxos then had 8,000 men able to fight as hoplites, armoured foot soldiers. The Persian siege lasted four months and failed.

Before the siege came the tyrant Lygdamis. He first backed the exiled Athenian tyrant Peisistratos, who landed at Marathon to retake Athens. As tyrant, Lygdamis exiled possible rivals and spread his rule to neighbouring Paros.

On a Naxos tour, Lygdamis also links the island to Samos. He sent mercenaries to help Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, fight Miletus and Mytilene. In 501 BC the people of Naxos rose against the aristocracy. A large number of aristocrats fled to Miletus.

Aristagoras of Miletus then pitched an attack to the Persian governor Artaphernes. He called Naxos small, close to Ionia and rich in wealth and slaves. He claimed a hundred ships were enough to take Naxos, the Cyclades and Euboea.

The voyage went wrong early. Megabates had Scylax, a captain from Myndus, jammed through an oar hole for posting no sentries. Aristagoras cut him free. Herodotus says the furious Megabates then warned the Naxians.

On a Naxos tour, the aftermath shows how much rode on the siege. Before sailing away, the attackers built a stronghold on Naxos for the exiled aristocrats. The failure left Aristagoras unable to repay Artaphernes for the expedition.

• Salamis: Naxos had to send four ships to the Persian fleet for the Battle of Salamis.
• Democritus: Under this commander, the Naxian ships switched sides and fought for the Greeks.
• Tribute: After a failed bid to leave the Delian League, Naxos paid Athens in gold, not military aid.
• Dependants: Aristagoras named Paros and Andros as islands that depended on Naxos.

How did water reach the town on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour can follow the ancient aqueduct of Naxos. It is about 11 km long and dates from the 6th century BC. It carried water from the rich springs of Flerio to Chora. It worked without a break until the 8th century AD.

Water entered at a basin carved into the rock. That basin now lies under an animal-driven pump-well near the Sanctuary of the Springs. The route passed Agios Thalelaios, Aggidia and the Katsagra plain. It ended on the Kastro hill, the oldest part of Chora.

On a Naxos tour, the line of the channel makes sense on the ground. It follows the edge between farmed lower land and barren higher land. Distribution tanks along the route watered crops. Finally, it fed an arched fountain-house, the Trani Fountana, near the ancient market.

A 230 m tunnel starts at the lowest point of the saddle of the Flerio basin. Its features resemble the Tunnel of Eupalinos on Samos, a sign of ties between Lygdamis and Polycrates. The entrance of the tunnel was discovered in 2003.

The tunnel runs from Barou to Kaminia and tapped the Kampones spring near its exit. In Roman times, two shafts for collecting and cleaning water were dug near its ends. They stand about 3.70 m high.

On a Naxos tour, the pipes tell their own story. The first clay pipes were replaced from time to time, as sediment blocked the flow. In Roman times a stone canal of limestone and lime mortar replaced them on the same route.

• Restoration: The University of Athens excavated and restored the aqueduct from 1997 to 2010.
• Sections: Restored parts stand at Flerio, Katsoprini, Leftera, Aimazos, Perdikia, Farangas, Agios Thalelaios and Agios Stefanos.
• Ariadne: An ancient spring outside the town of Naxos bears the name Ariadne.
• Desalination: After years of low rainfall, desalination plants were installed near the town hall of Chora.

Who ruled the Duchy on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour meets the Duchy of the Archipelago, founded by Marco Sanudo. In 1210 he swore loyalty to the Latin Emperor Henry. Henry gave him the title Duke of the Archipelago. Sanudo was born around 1153.

Sanudo let the Greek landowners, the archontes, keep their land, privileges and Orthodox faith. About half of the fiefs on Naxos stayed in Greek hands. Nobles spoke Italian, while ordinary islanders spoke a mix of Italian and Greek.

On a Naxos tour, Duchess Fiorenza Sanudo is a colourful figure. She drew such a crowd of suitors that a historian called her the Penelope of Frankish Greece. Venice took her to Crete and held her there. She left once she agreed to marry her cousin Nicholas in 1364.

In the war of 1463 to 1479, the Ottomans occupied Naxos. They carried off the bulk of its people as slaves. The later Crispo dukes came from a Verona family of Lombard stock. Greek rebels once trapped Duke John III Crispo in the Kastro. Galleys of the Knights of Rhodes saved him.

On a Naxos tour, the later dukes read like a novel. Francesco III Crispo, called the Mad Duke, murdered his wife. The Naxians then made his eleven-year-old son duke. A Turkish corsair later kidnapped the young Duke John IV on a hunt. A ransom freed him.

• 1537: On 5 November, John IV surrendered to the Ottomans and promised a yearly tribute of 5000 ducats.
• 1563: A Venetian report put the ducal income at up to 10,000 ducats a year. The duke paid 4000 to the sultan.
• Giacomo IV: The last duke rushed to Constantinople with money to keep his duchy. He was locked up for months.
• Graziani: Gaspar Graziani, the last to hold the ducal title, was murdered by his own supporters in 1620.

Joseph Nasi, who took over the duchy, was born in Portugal in 1524. There he was known as João Miques.

How did Catholic Naxos shape a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour finds a Catholic past that goes back to 1208. That year Marco Sanudo asked Pope Innocent III for a bishop for Naxos. In 1209 the new Latin bishopric came under Bernard, the Latin archbishop of Athens.

Naxos became a Catholic archdiocese in 1522, when the archbishop left Rhodes for Naxos after the Ottoman conquest. On 3 June 1919 the Naxos archdiocese joined with Tinos and Mykonos. Its new name also took in Andros.

On a Naxos tour, the Catholic cathedral in the Kastro is the key stop. It was built in the early 13th century with three aisles and a dome. In 1536 builders added two more aisles, giving it five aisles and three domes.

The cathedral keeps a two-sided 11th-century icon of the Virgin Eleousa, brought from Nicomedia in Asia Minor. Today the archdiocese’s cathedral stands at Xinara on Tinos, and Naxos town keeps a co-cathedral. In 2013 the archdiocese counted 5,400 Catholics, 8.7 percent of its people.

A Jesuit house opened on Naxos in 1627, partly paid for by merchants of Rouen in France. For over a century, Jesuits and Catholic nobles staged plays in Greek on the feast of St Chrysostom.

On a Naxos tour, the Kastro schools have a famous pupil. Nikos Kazantzakis enrolled in 1897 at the French Commercial School of the Holy Cross. There he learned French and Italian.

• Capuchins: Friars of the Paris mission settled on Naxos in 1652.
• Ursulines: These nuns arrived on Naxos in 1670.
• Saulger: The Jesuit head Robert Saulger wrote a history of the dukes, published without his name in 1698.
• Kalamitsia: A late 17th-century Jesuit complex there now lies in ruins.

Early in the 17th century, 119 Catholic families, 367 people, lived chiefly in the Kastro. About 4000 Orthodox lived beside them. Cycladic surnames such as Dellarokas, Grispos, Venieris and Damigos come from Italian or Venetian families.

What happened after 1821 on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour after 1821 meets a divided island. About 16,000 Catholics lived in the Cyclades when the War of Independence began, a large share on Naxos. The French flag flew over the Catholic churches of Naxos for the whole war, which protected them.

Orthodox islanders called the Catholics of Naxos Turk-lovers. The Orthodox Greeks of Naxos raised a troop of eight hundred men to fight the Ottomans. In the late spring of 1821, Archbishop Veggetti and the Catholics acted. They tried to save 110 Turkish captives from revenge killings.

On a Naxos tour, the war years left marks. The Turks who lived on Naxos escaped to Rhodes. Refugees from Crete, Kasos and the Peloponnese reached the island. Poverty pushed a number of them into piracy.

France wanted the Cyclades, to protect their Catholics. In 1832, though, the islands went to the Greek kingdom of Otto.

Under the Ottomans, local magistrates called epitropes ran the Cyclades, and their main job was collecting taxes. From 1621 Naxos was run as three communities: the Kastro, the Bourgos and the villages. After long struggles against the feudal lords, the Ottoman government ended the last Frankish privileges in 1818.

Naxians also moved away, in large numbers, to Constantinople, Smyrna and Vourla. In Smyrna they worked as coopers and vine growers. After the 1922 Asia Minor disaster, Greek refugees settled in Chora, Koronos and other places on Naxos.

On a Naxos tour, the Second World War is close at hand. Like the bulk of the Cyclades, Naxos stayed under Italian control until 1943. The Germans held Milos and Amorgos. Before the war, Naxos got a third of its supplies from Athens, carried by six caiques.

• Ships: During the war, the Germans sank four of the island’s ships.
• Raids: Raiders attacked the German garrison twice in 1944, the second time on 12 October.
• Freedom: The island was freed on 15 October 1944.
• Population: Naxos had 20,132 people in 1940 but only 14,201 by 1971.

Which famous Naxians does a Naxos tour recall?

A Naxos tour recalls Manolis Glezos, born in Apeiranthos on 9 September 1922. His family moved to Athens in 1935. Charles de Gaulle called him the first partisan of Europe. Glezos led the Apeiranthos community from 1987 to 1990.

Glezos designed a system of small dams. In 1941, he and Apostolos Santas tore down the swastika flag from the Acropolis. They send rainwater into underground aquifers to stop floods and erosion. In 2014, at the age of 91, he became the oldest member ever elected to the European Parliament.

On a Naxos tour, his name appears in Chora too. On 5 October 2020, the largest high school of Naxos took his name.

Playwright Iakovos Kambanellis was born in Chora on 2 December 1921. He was the sixth of nine children of a pharmacist. On Naxos, he and Glezos were classmates in the first two years of secondary school.

Kambanellis survived the Mauthausen concentration camp. He wrote the words of the Mauthausen Trilogy, with music by Mikis Theodorakis. His play The Courtyard of Miracles opened at the Art Theatre in the 1957–58 season.

He wrote the scripts of at least 12 films, including Stella of 1955 by Michael Cacoyannis. He also wrote lyrics for more than 100 songs. In 2000 he was elected to the Academy of Athens.

On a Naxos tour, a statue on the seafront square of Naxos town honours Petros Protopapadakis of Apeiranthos. He studied mathematics and engineering in Paris. He taught at the Scholi Evelpidon military academy. He was Prime Minister from late spring to 28 August 1922.

• Trial of the Six: Protopapadakis was executed after it, and in 2010 the Supreme Court overturned the convictions.
• Anthimus III: Born on Naxos in 1762, he was Ecumenical Patriarch from 1822 to 1824.
• Callinicus III: Elected Patriarch on 19 November 1726, he died that same night, before his enthronement.
• Nafpliotis: Iakovos Nafpliotis, born on Naxos in 1864, became First Cantor of the Patriarchate.

Footballer Stelios Manolas, born on Naxos on 13 July 1961, spent his whole professional career at AEK Athens.

Which saints and monasteries does a Naxos tour honour?

A Naxos tour honours Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite, born on Naxos as Nikolaos Kallivourtsis. With Macarius of Corinth he compiled the Philokalia, a collection of texts from the 4th to 15th centuries. It was first printed in Venice in 1782.

His parents were Antonios and Anastasia. As a boy he studied at the school of Agios Georgios on Naxos. His teacher was Chrysanthos, brother of Saint Kosmas the Aetolian. In 1775 he went to Dionysiou Monastery on Mount Athos and became a monk.

On a Naxos tour, his legal work is less known. He wrote the Pedalion, or Rudder, a book of Church canons, in 1793. It was printed in Leipzig in 1800. The Orthodox Church declared him a saint in 1955.

Naxos town marks the feasts of Saint Nicodemus and of Panagia Chrysopolitissa with parades and icon processions.

The nunnery of Agios Ioannis Chrysostomos stands on a hill above Grotta beach, 2.5 km north-east of Chora. Local tradition says nuns have run it without a break since 1280. It is thought to be the only monastery in Greece dedicated to Saint John Chrysostom.

On a Naxos tour, the nunnery has a family link to the saint. His mother became a nun there, and it still keeps books he sent her. Built like a fortress, it has a low gate and a hole for pouring hot oil on pirates.

• Fotodotis: This monastery just above Danakos holds its feast on 6 August.
• Benedictines: After the Franks took Naxos, Fotodotis was given to Benedictine monks in 1227.
• Size: The tower-monastery measures 30 by 20 m, rises 15 m and was restored from 1991 to 2007.
• Ypsilotera: The notable Iakovos Kokkos founded it at Egares, and his coat of arms there carries 1600.

Faneromeni monastery lies about 10 km north of Chora, on the west road to Apollonas. Its abbot, Dorotheos Tziotis, set up two of the first schools on Naxos in 1826.

What dialect does a Naxos tour hear?

A Naxos tour hears a dialect from the Southern group of Modern Greek. Linguists place Crete, the Peloponnese and the Ionian Islands in the same group. Locals call a person from Naxos a Naxiotis, Axiotis or Axotis. In local speech, Apeiranthos is Aperathou.

In tsitakism, found chiefly in the Cyclades, the k sound before front vowels moves forward to ts. Folk texts always give Apeiranthos in its local form. The village shares its dialect, customs, poetry and music with Sfakia and Anogeia in Crete.

On a Naxos tour, Apeiranthos is called the village that writes verses. Its men and women can talk in rhyme. The rhyming couplet that Crete calls a mantinada is called a kotsaki there. A kotsaki has two rhyming lines, each of fifteen syllables as a rule.

Professor Ioannis Promponas studied Naxian documents from 1433 to 1837 for a 1968 study of the older dialect. He found the north-east villages sound closest to old Naxian. Their isolation kept Venetian influence low.

On a Naxos tour, Koronos speech stands out. It uses five vowels, and only n and s can end a word. Speakers drop g at the start of words and between vowels, so gamos, meaning wedding, becomes amos.

In Koronos, people say the na instead of tha for the future. An example is the na pame sti Chora. Apeiranthos speech used the verb ending -asi, as in efaasi.

• Fyros: The local word for red comes from ancient pyrros and appears in papyri from 159 AD.
• Patinades: In Koronos, villagers sang these wedding couplets outside the newlyweds’ house the next day.
• Chouzouris: In 1997 Ioannis Chouzouris published eleven thousand fifteen-syllable verses on Koronos and its history.
• Vontorini: Folk poet Eirini Markou (1917–2010) came from Apeiranthos and was honoured by the Academy of Athens.

Which songs and dances does a Naxos tour meet?

A Naxos tour meets songs rooted in two villages, Apiranthos and Kinidaros. Folklorist Dimitris Economidis noted that Chora has no ties with the traditional songs. Whole music families in Kinidaros, Komiaki, Koronos, Apiranthos and Filoti keep the village songs alive.

Songs from Asia Minor began reaching Naxos around 1912, and their pull grew after refugees arrived in 1922. Dances such as Politiko Syrto, Smyrneiko, Silivriano and Aivaliotiko carry the names of their homes. Those homes lay in Constantinople and Asia Minor.

On a Naxos tour, the instruments tell of change. In the early 20th century, the souravli flute, the tsabouna bagpipe and the toubaki drum began giving way. Clarinet, violin and laouto took their place. The tsabouna and toubaki pair still plays at upland feasts, above all at carnival.

The santouri, a hammered dulcimer, has faded from island feasts, possibly because no new players are learning it. Local dances include the syrtos, ballos, vlacha, dirla, vintzilleadistikos, kotsatos and nikindres.

Dancing at a Naxian feast starts slow, grows faster and bouncier, and ends with the ballos. Musicians learned each dancer’s own style. They answered with tunes tailor-made for that dancer.

On a Naxos tour, Koronos holds rich song lore. In the 1930s, the village had more than twenty players of the violin, the laouto and the clarinet. Its vlacha is titled My old troubles, and it sings of feasting on pain.

• Ekatologa: A young man in Koronos wooing a girl sang a hundred numbered love couplets.
• Kinidaros: Villagers say that children learn to dance first and to walk afterwards.
• Konitopoulos: Violinist Giorgos Konitopoulos (1933–1991), son of a Kinidaros violinist, left about 500 songs.
• Pantelias: Theofanis Pantelias of Komiaki is called the leading violinist of the Naxian tradition.

At Naxian funerals, close relatives, chiefly women, sing laments. They tell the life and good deeds of the dead.

Which artworks show a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour meets Ariadne, left on the island by Theseus, in paintings, poems and operas. Titian painted Bacchus and Ariadne between 1520 and 1523 for Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara. It hangs in the National Gallery in London.

Raphael first held the commission, but he had made only a drawing when he died in 1520. Titian shows Bacchus leaping from a chariot pulled by two cheetahs. Theseus’s ship sails off on the far left. A gold urn carries the painter’s signature, TICIANVS.

On a Naxos tour, Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos is the best-known musical version. It first played in Stuttgart on 25 October 1912, after Hofmannsthal’s version of a Molière play. Play and opera together lasted over six hours. So Strauss swapped the play for a prologue, first staged in Vienna in 1916.

In the opera, Zerbinetta and her comic troupe try to cheer the abandoned Ariadne with songs and dances. Monteverdi’s opera L’Arianna opened in Mantua in 1608 at a royal wedding. Only Ariadne’s Lament survives.

Chronicler Federico Follino claimed its temporary theatre held 6,000 people, with 300 men working the stage machinery. Singer Virginia Ramponi-Andreini learned the role of Ariadne in six days, after the lead soprano died of smallpox.

On a Naxos tour, the poets come first in time. Ovid’s Heroides holds fifteen letters in verse, and the tenth is Ariadne writing to Theseus. Catullus 64, the poet’s longest poem, tells her desertion through scenes shown on an object. That device is called ecphrasis.

• Benda: Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos of 1775 mixes speech and music with no singing.
• Tintoretto: His Bacchus, Venus and Ariadne of 1576–77, in the Doge’s Palace, makes Ariadne stand for Venice.
• Kauffman: Angelica Kauffman painted Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus in 1774, and it hangs in Houston.
• De Chirico: His Ariadne of 1913, in New York’s Metropolitan Museum, shows her asleep in an empty square.

Antoine-Jean Gros painted Bacchus and Ariadne in 1820, and the original is in the Phoenix Art Museum.

What do village houses show on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour shows village houses shaped by climate, land, family needs, local masons and nearby materials. The earliest folk house was one large room for living and storing goods. Later houses added a kitchen, bedrooms and a cellar.

The kitchen doubled as the dining room. Almost every folk house had arches joining the main door to the courtyard. Courtyards held flowers, climbing herbs, small stables for animals and an earth oven.

On a Naxos tour, local words name the parts of a house. Anefanos is the chimney, volta the stone arch, pounti the veranda and parastia the fireplace. Marble pillars and marble door and window frames, called morssa, mark the Naxian folk house.

Shepherds and farmers lived in single rooms of stone and a little mud. They had ceiling beams and a big cooking fireplace. A stone wall closed the courtyard, which held a marble trough for watering the animals.

Apeiranthos has been a listed traditional settlement since 1978. It has such a range of chimney shapes that it is called a valley of anefanoi.

On a Naxos tour, watermills are a hidden heritage. Naxos has about 90 of them, chiefly in the centre and north. The oldest known watermill document dates from 1549, and the mills worked until the 1960s. Water dropped 15 to 20 m down a stone tower to turn a wheel in the basement.

• Materials: Mill walls were limestone set in mortar, and roofs were branches, canes and earth, or schist slabs.
• Melanes: Two watermills in a row belonged to Jesuit monks. Water from the first fell into the second.
• Kokkos tower: In Mesi Potamia, a mill in the basement of this three-storey tower ran until 1966.
• Fabrikes: Koronos once had five olive mills, called fabrikes in local speech, and two have been restored.

The Boulamatsades mill kept a wooden press until 1900. A marble cylinder of 1845 there carries a 5th-century marble oil lamp.

What wildlife does a Naxos tour meet?

A Naxos tour crosses a bird reserve over the Naxos mountains. It covers about 11,945 hectares and became a Special Protection Area in 2002. It records 92 breeding pairs of Eleonora’s falcons. Peregrine falcons, 2 to 4 pairs, live there all year.

Common buzzards breed there too, with 2 to 3 pairs. The short-toed snake eagle also breeds in the reserve. So do Cretzschmar’s bunting and the olive-tree warbler.

On a Naxos tour, raptors are the stars. Bonelli’s eagles in Greece fell from 200 or more pairs in the early 1980s to fewer than 50. On the Aegean islands, rabbits make up 40.8% of their prey items.

Locals call the griffon vulture Skanias. Dozens of these vultures breed in the Naxos mountains and hills. Naxos and Irakleia are the only Greek islands outside Crete where griffon vultures still live.

The stone marten, locally called Atsida, is the largest wild land mammal on Naxos. The green toad and the Balkan frog are the only two amphibians. The Balkan pond turtle lives in the larger permanent waters. Hares, rabbits, hedgehogs and stone martens are the best-known wild mammals.

On a Naxos tour, reptiles warm up on the walls. The rough-tailed agama, a large lizard, basks on the dry stone walls. Naxos has at least five snake species. The long-nosed viper among them is venomous but shy and rare. The javelin sand boa is feared but harmless, and it lives chiefly underground.

The Aegean wall lizard is even more common on the walls. Its males show green backs in the spring mating season. Kotschyi’s gecko and the Mediterranean house gecko gather near house lights on warm nights.

• Four-lined snake: It is large but harmless, and farmers value it because it eats rodents.
• Tortoises: Any land tortoise seen on Naxos is not native.
• Endemics: Cerastium runemarkii, Bupleurum aira, Erysimum naxense and Symphytum naxicola grow only on Naxos.
• Orchids: More than 20 species grow on Naxos, in genera such as Ophrys, Serapias and Anacamptis.

Which cedar dunes and salt lakes does a Naxos tour pass?

A Naxos tour on the south coast passes juniper dunes, a priority habitat in EU law. They cover about 88 hectares of the central and southern Naxos Natura site. Young, still-moving sand dunes cover about 33 hectares of the same site.

White dunes with marram grass and damp hollows between dunes each cover just over 8 hectares. Coastal lagoons, another priority habitat, cover a little more than 5 hectares.

On a Naxos tour, the dune shrub is the large-fruited juniper. It is a spreading shrub 2 to 5 m tall. Only rarely does it form a tree up to 14 m. Its leaves grow in whorls of three and measure 12 to 20 mm long.

Each large-fruited juniper is either a male or a female plant. Its round, berry-like cones measure 12 to 18 mm across and hold three seeds. It grows wild from south-western Spain east to western Turkey and Cyprus. The sandy area of Alyko holds one of the biggest stands of it.

The coastal plains at Agiassos and Kalantos are made largely of Quaternary alluvium, soil laid down by streams. A 2012 presidential decree protected the marshes at Pyrgaki, Agiassos and Kalantos as small island wetlands.

On a Naxos tour, Alyki lagoon is the birding spot. Observers have logged 166 bird species there. Reeds, water plants and clumps of cedar trees grow around it. Greater flamingos, black-winged stilts, Kentish plovers and rare ferruginous ducks shelter there.

• Salt meadows: They cover just over 4 hectares of the Natura site, and salt-loving scrub just over 3.
• Ammitis: Spotted crakes, moorhens and little bitterns hide in the Ammitis reeds, where eels also live.
• Winter: Great crested and black-necked grebes and redshanks spend the winter in the Naxos bird reserve.
• Migration: Black-tailed and bar-tailed godwits and little stints stop in the reserve on migration.

Which footpaths does a Naxos tour walk?

A Naxos tour on foot can follow the Naxos Strada, a route of 50,250 m. The South Aegean Region marked it out as the backbone of the island’s path network. It links the port of Apollonas with Plaka and Chora.

The Strada passes almost every inland village. It splits into at least 4 day stages. Overnight stops fall in villages such as Chalki, Apeiranthos and Koronos. A small Naxos Strada plate sits under the main path signpost.

On a Naxos tour, the historical route suits ancient sites. It runs 20,100 m through Melanes, Flerio, Sagri and Damarionas. It ends at Chalki in the Tragea valley. Route 1 runs 11,470 m from Apeiranthos past the emery mines to the port of Moutsouna.

Route 6 runs 10,200 m from Melanes through Myli, Flerio and the three Potamia villages to Vivlos. Route 8 is an 11,000 m loop from Moni over Fanari mountain and through Apeiranthos. It passes old farm buildings called mitata and steep vineyard terraces called halia.

Route 9 runs 10,350 m from Koronos via Skado and Komiaki down to Apollonas. Near Komiaki it passes a group of 5 old watermills. Route 10 runs 6,300 m from Koronos to Lionas and crosses three arched stone bridges.

On a Naxos tour, the wilder paths lie east. Route 15 follows the untouched south-east coast for 7,680 m from Panermos to Kalantos. It is only partly signposted. Route 18 drops from 640 m at Komiaki to 210 m at the tower and monastery of Agia.

• Route 11: It runs 6,500 m from Kinidaros to Eggares, past a 19th-century two-arched bridge at Chalantra.
• Route 12: Its first 10,470 m, from Koronos to the abandoned village of Skeponi, is waymarked.
• Track files: Each route page lists the path length, a star rating and a .gpx track file.
• Flowers: The best flower season on the trails runs from late March to mid-June.

How does Naxos earn its living on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour passes quarries that export about 5,000 cubic metres of high-value marble a year. Workers pick the whitest parts of the stone. That choice sets the selling price of Naxian marble. Farming and herding have long come first, and fishing very little.

On the island, Naxian marble frames windows and doors. It is also made into marble plaster. Emery, the other island stone, is called smyrigli or asmyrigli in the local dialect.

Naxos is the only place in Greece with emery in workable amounts. Artificial corundum later pushed it off the world market. Miners dug galleries 50 to 250 m deep and laid rails for their wagons.

On a Naxos tour, emery has its own rules. Since Ottoman times, only the people of six mountain villages hold the right to mine and sell it. The privilege still holds. The villages are Apeiranthos, Koronos, Danakos, Keramoti, Skado and Mesi.

Village men over 18 can register as emery workers. They must hand all their emery to the Greek state, its only seller. Workers get state insurance based on the amount they deliver, and the state pays the contributions.

Today only a handful still sell small amounts, chiefly to keep that insurance. In the 1920s, Naxos exported between 10,000 and 22,000 tonnes of emery a year. By 1930 the price was only 60% of its 1923 level. Production stopped completely in 1940.

In 1925 an aerial ropeway was built to carry emery to the port of Moutsouna. It had 5 loading stations and 72 steel pylons up to 50 m high.

On a Naxos tour, emery also touches national history. In 1898, the net income from emery sales was pledged to guarantee Greece’s public debt. That debt sat under International Financial Control. During the First World War, emery miners were spared army service, because Allied war factories needed the mineral.

• Lionas: Bullet marks from a 1916 battle between police and emery workers scar the old boatyard chimney.
• Waste: Leftover quarry waste is used as gravel and for building roads.
• 1983: Emery exports fell to 3,000 tonnes.
• 1987: They fell again, to 1,100 tonnes.

Which village museums does a Naxos tour visit?

A Naxos tour in Apeiranthos finds an archaeological museum built from local finds. They were saved by mathematician Michael Bardanis, called Pazaromichalis, who lived from 1907 to 1975. In 1980 the Ministry of Culture named it the Michalis Bardanis Museum.

The Ephorate calls it the only museum in the world built entirely from its own residents’ donations. Its Early Cycladic collection is rated about third in importance in Greece. Its showpiece is a set of 12 slabs from Korfi t’Aroniou. They are pecked with daily-life scenes of the 3rd millennium BC.

On a Naxos tour, Apeiranthos packs in more museums. The Folklore Museum on Platsa square holds over 1,200 items of folk art, all donated by villagers. The Geological Museum Petros Protopapadakis displays more than 2,000 samples of rocks, minerals, ores and fossils.

The Natural History Museum has a sea section and a land section. It shows an aquarium, shells, dolphin skeletons and whale bones. The Museum of Visual Arts, founded in 2008, shows works by artists based on Naxos.

In Chora, the Venetian Museum, or Domus Della Rocca-Barozzi, fills an old Kastro mansion. It shows how townspeople lived in the 19th century. The Byzantine Museum in the Crispi tower shows Byzantine sculptures from the 7th to 12th centuries. The Glezos family gave the tower on condition it house such a museum.

On a Naxos tour, site museums show finds where they were dug. The on-site museum under Mitropolis Square opened in 1999 as the first of its kind in Greece. The site museum at Sangri won a Europa Nostra award for a building that fits its natural setting.

In 2000 a plan to open the emery mines to visitors was approved. It drew on a study by the National Technical University of Athens. It included an open-air museum at Stravolagkada.

• Petroglyphs: Carved spirals and cup-marks in the Apeiranthos museum come from south-east Naxos and Iraklia.
• Kourounochori: This collection opened in July 2010 in a 50-square-metre hall of a 1950s primary school.
• Sphinx: Its finds include an unfinished 7th-century sphinx and emery pestles of ancient quarry workers.
• Filoti: The Nikolas Moustakis Museum of Greek Coins shows recent Greek and Cypriot coins and banknotes.

Which months suit a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour suits the dry months of early summer. In 2019–2020 averages, hilltop Apeiranthos got just 1.1 mm of rain in June. August nights there averaged 21.8 °C, and September nights 18.7 °C.

Winter in the hills is cool and wet. In February, Apeiranthos brought highs of 10.2 °C and lows of 5.9 °C, with 137.8 mm of rain. January nights averaged 4.8 °C.

On a Naxos tour in March, Apeiranthos averaged highs of 13 °C and lows of 7.8 °C. March rain still reached 80.3 mm. All these hill figures come from the 2019–2020 averages.

Summer can bring a surprise shower. July rain in Apeiranthos reached 19.4 mm, more than the two months before it together.

Late autumn turns wet. November in Apeiranthos averaged highs of 16.1 °C and lows of 11.7 °C. December averaged highs of 12.3 °C and lows of 8.6 °C. Its rain reached 155.9 mm.

On a Naxos tour in winter, Naxos town can still warm up. Its record high is 22.8 °C for January, 26.2 °C for February and 26.0 °C for December.

• Wind: The Greek weather service lists north as the prevailing wind at Naxos in every month.
• Concerts: From April to October, the Venetian Museum hosts jazz, classical guitar and piano concerts.
• Raki: Distilling starts at the end of September, when villagers gather to dance to live music.
• Wettest: January is the wettest month in Apeiranthos, ahead of December.

How did early travellers see a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour follows early travellers such as Cristoforo Buondelmonti, a Florentine priest. He left Florence around 1414 to travel the Aegean islands. His Liber insularum Archipelagi of 1420 combined notes with charts and sailing directions.

Buondelmonti had learned Greek from Guarino da Verona. Ignatius Lichte, head of the Jesuit house in the Kastro, visited Apollonas between 1680 and 1690. He described the remains of its ancient harbour mole.

On a Naxos tour, the French traveller Jean de Thévenot is worth a mention. He reported wide marshes at Aplikia, where huge numbers of eels were caught. Early English accounts came from Bernard Randolph in 1687 and Edward Daniel Clarke in 1814. William Martin Leake followed in 1835.

Botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort toured the Greek islands from 1700 to 1702. Botanist Andreas Gundelsheimer and artist Claude Aubriet went with him. His party crossed from Paros in under two hours and stayed on Naxos from 7 to 15 September.

The Jesuits told Tournefort the whole island held no more than 8,000 souls. In 1700 the islanders paid 5,000 crowns in poll tax and 5,500 crowns in land tax. He measured the opening of the Portara at 18 feet high and 11 feet 3 inches wide.

On a Naxos tour, Theodore Bent gives the warmest picture. He and his wife spent Christmas on Naxos. A week of storms forced them to sleep under umbrellas. At Filoti, he watched women kick round marble rollers over flat roofs to press down rain-soaked mud.

• Partridges: Peasants caught them by hiding under a donkey’s belly and driving the birds into nets.
• Eels: Fishermen caught mullets and eels in the salt-pan harbour with folding hurdles made of reeds.
• Komiaki: Bent called it the highest village, cut off by snow for up to a fortnight in winter.
• Engares: Bent found the plain one large orange garden, split into plots by tall reeds.

At Komiaki, Bent saw a wax cross marked IXN laid on the lips of the dead. Villagers still called it naulon, the old fare for Charon.

Which villages are largest on a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour starts in Naxos town, which counted 8,551 residents in the 2021 census. Agkidia, on its edge, counted 341. With 814 residents, Agios Arsenios was the largest village after Filoti. Vivlos counted 782.

Vivlos was officially named Tripodes until 1912, then Vivlos (Tripodes). It became plain Vivlos only from the 1940 census. The Plaka settlement added 27 residents to its community.

On a Naxos tour, Apeiranthos village itself counted 590 residents in 2021. The rest of its community lives in hamlets such as Kleido, Kanaki and Lygaridia. Galanado counted 515 residents.

Melanes counted 464 residents in 2021. Its community of 709 also covers Kourounochori and Agios Thalelaios. Koronos village counted 306 residents, and Koronos took its present name only in 1927.

Before that, Koronos was recorded as Trikoukiai or Vothroi. Kinidaros was written Kynidaros until the 1940 census corrected the spelling. Galini was called Achapsi until 1955.

On a Naxos tour, the Potamia valley shows how small villages can be. In 2021, Kato Potamia counted 123 residents, Ano Potamia 79 and Mesi Potamia 42. Theodore Bent wrote that the three villages climb a hillside from the river that names them.

• Komiaki: It has carried the official name Koronis since 1940, and Latin documents spell it Chimiachi and Comiachi.
• Coast: Mikri Vigla counted 152 residents in 2021, more than nearby Kastraki with 136.
• Glinado: Its name possibly comes from glina, a folk word for clay-rich soil.
• Damarionas: Tradition links it to Damaris, an Athenian who became a Christian with Saint Dionysius.

Another idea traces Glinado to the family of Manolis Glinos, its first settlers. The real origin of the name Damarionas is unknown.

What do visitors ask about a Naxos tour?

A Naxos tour raises questions about the airport, medical care and old coats of arms. Others ask about newspapers, town quarters and sport. Naxos Island National Airport lies just 3 metres above sea level. Its runway has seen incidents.

What happened at the airport on a Naxos tour?

On 12 July 2019, a Sky Express plane ran off the paved runway before take-off. Nobody was hurt, but the airport closed that day. On 12 December 2009, an Olympic Air plane bound for Naxos approached Paros airport by mistake. It went around and landed at Naxos.

Where is medical care on a Naxos tour?

The hospital in Naxos town is undergoing a 6.8 million euro expansion. The regional medical office in Filoti answers to it, has two rural doctors and also serves Danakos. In 1700, Tournefort found friars practising medicine, with good Jesuit and Capuchin apothecary shops.

Which coats of arms appear on a Naxos tour?

The Duchy’s arms belonged to its two ruling houses: Sanudo, 1207 to 1383, and Crispo, 1383 to 1566. Bent described the Crispo arms as two upright swords between two lozenges. The family’s descendants on Paros still bore them. M. de Nointel had the French king’s arms carved at a Naxos cave. His local escort said thunder had destroyed them.

Which newspapers served a Naxos tour island?

Naxiaka Chronika was a monthly political and literary newspaper, printed in Athens from 1960 to 1964. Its publisher was Nikiforos Mandilaras. It was read chiefly on Naxos. A 1966 follow-up titled Kykladika Chronika printed only one issue. Folklorist Manolis Sergis traced the Naxian press from 1890 to 2005. The Municipality of Naxos published his study.

What do quarter names mean on a Naxos tour?

The Bourgos quarter takes its name from the Venetian word borgo, a kind of fortified settlement. Evriaki, a neighbourhood just outside Bourgos, means Jewish and was once the town’s Jewish quarter. Tournefort wrote that the name Naxia was a corruption of Naxos. John Cameniates, who described the Saracen capture of Thessalonica, already used that form.

Which sports club plays on a Naxos tour?

Pannaxiakos, the sports club of Chora, was founded in 1960 when Apollon Naxou merged with Olympiakos Naxou. It plays in blue and white, uses the Portara as its emblem and counts more than 450 athletes. It has won the Cyclades Cup seven times and the Cyclades Championship eight times.