It didn’t strike me as excessively romantic to suppose that the feta over which my daughter and I nearly wept during lunch had come from the same sheep that had swarmed our car ten minutes earlier. Or that the oil and herbs that enshrouded this cheese had traveled no more than a few paces from their birthplaces to my palate. It would not be excessive to suppose these things, because this was Naxos, and such suppositions seemed not only appropriate but expected.
Naxos is the largest of Greek’s myth-drenched Cyclades Islands but not the most famous, its neighbors Santorini and Mykonos, for example, attracting more attention and considerably more traffic. Naxos owes its (slightly lesser) renown to the legend of the Cretan princess Ariadne, who helped Theseus defeat the Knossian Minotaur and escape from the infamous Labyrinth, only to be abandoned by her fiancée at Naxos on their way to Athens. A visit to both places suggests that she landed in the better destination. We, too, arrived here as the result of an unanticipated twist to our itinerary, and were glad for the detour.
PORTARA, CHORA AND KASTRO
As our ferry approached the harbor at Naxos Town (or Chora, to the locals), we were greeted by the Portara, the thirty-foot marble “doorway to nowhere,” as the Naxians say, that stands today as the only remnant of an ambitious 6th century B.C. building project. Because this doorway faces Apollo’s birthplace on the sacred island of Delos — around which the Cyclades form something of a circle, hence their name — it is believed that the structure was conceived as a temple to the sun god. The work was abandoned when its sponsoring tyrant was overthrown by invading Spartans, and was subsequently used and progressively dismantled by early Christians, colonizing Venetians and others, the doorway presumably left in place because its twenty-ton blocks, thankfully, were too heavy to mess with.
The islet on which the Portara stands is connected to the main island by a short causeway, the north winds driving high swells against the stone path and turning our hundred-yard dash into a high-stakes game of wet chicken. Safely, if damply, across the causeway, we cast our gaze up toward the Kastro, a 13th century Venetian castle that appears to float on a cloud of the lower town’s whitewashed buildings.
Your short ascent through the castle gates leads to several structures in an eclectic array of styles reflecting key periods of influence, including Byzantine, medieval and Venetian. In these intimate quarters you’ll explore several towers; a Capuchin monastery; a cathedral and an Orthodox church; an 18th century all-girls Ursuline school; a Venetian residence stocked with period furnishings and other wares (closed temporarily, we were told, due to a dispute between the private owners and the municipality, marking the sole disappointment of our visit); and a small but impressive archaeological museum housed in the building where Zorba the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis attended school. The castle hosts concerts, art festivals and even an outdoor cinema — Casablanca played during our stay — and of particular delight was our discovery in the the stone of the northern gate, or Trani Porta, of a vertical groove, at knee level and roughly one yard tall, against which merchants would measure fabrics to be sold to the castle’s noble residents.
Winding between the base of the Kastro and the cheerful waterfront promenade, the serpentine “streets” of the Bourgos area of old Chora would be described more accurately as passageways, few of them more than a couple of yards wide and their disorienting, maze-like flow hinting either at Ariadne’s nostalgia for the Labyrinth back home in daddy’s basement, or at her fondness for Venetian pasta. At seemingly every bend, nook and cranny are restaurants serving Naxian specialties (we enjoyed exceptional lamb at Antamoma on the southern edge of town), artisans selling wares heavy on quality and light on kitsch, and private residences with doorsteps in full Technicolor bloom. Stop by family-operated Naxia Sweet Home for some hard candy, a local favorite, made while you wait. Here young Dimitris, the shop’s heir-apparent and resident basketball aficionado, will let you sample flavors from lemon to rose to bergamot to sage, while showing off his John Stockton/Karl Malone stockings and educating you in the many marvels of Milwaukee’s Giannis “The Greek Freak” Antetokounmpo.
INLAND VILLAGE DAY TRIP: CHALKIO, FILOTI, APEIRANTHOS AND MORE
Break yourself free from Chora’s powerful entrancement and explore the environs. The town hosts many agencies where you can rent cars, ATVs or motorbikes (the latter requires an “M” endorsement on your U.S. driver’s license, enforced strictly) for getting around the island, which is roughly the size of New Orleans.
At the recommendation of our gracious bed and breakfast hosts, we took a drive through a trio of inland villages. Our first stop was Chalkio, the island’s former capital and administrative center. Here we visited Fish & Olive, a gallery showcasing the widely-admired work of German wife-husband duo Katharina Bolesch and Alexander Reichardt, whose handmade pottery and jewelry, respectively, embody the spirit of the ruggedly bountiful land and the surrounding sea. Just around the corner and in the shade of a pergola flexing against its burden of grapes, we experienced the unpretentious gastronomical miracle of Café Galanis, whose fresh cheese, silky olive oil and ambrosian yiaourtopita (yogurt cake dipped in syrup) filled us for about $6 per person and made us mourn that we had mere human, and not bovine, stomach capacity.
Continuing into the mountains, we ascended a perilous yet well-maintained road to the Chapel of Agios Ioánnis (St. John), which, after a short scamper, afforded a 360-degree view encompassing the village of Filoti and nearby Mount Zas, named for Zeus, who is said to have been raised there in a cave that remains accessible today.
In one of the many cafés along the white-marble promenade through Apeiranthos, our third village, we found local patriarchs playing tavla (a Greek version of backgammon) while reciting with their komboskini, the rosary bracelets of the Greek Orthodox tradition. Next door, patrons of Berdema tavern who for whatever reason tire of the view from the four-season terrace can drink inside in the shadow of the circa ‘61 BMW R50 perched near the bar. Across the way, Επιλεκτον (“Selected”) offers enticing varieties of local oils, cheeses, liqueurs, dried fruits and other delicacies, and handicrafts such as a whole stampede’s worth of mule whips made from dried bull penises. With an early start from Chora, this day trip can also include stops at the marble quarries near Kinidaros, two Kouroi and the remains of an aqueduct near Flerio, and the delightfully informative olive oil museum at Eggares.
Kouroi, as you were wondering, are free-standing statues of young men, and common artistic features of ancient Greece. The three Naxian examples measure between 20 and 33 feet and today repose on the ground where the sculptors left them incomplete, claiming noteworthy spots on a relatively short list of the island’s antiquities. Indeed, aside from the singular Portara, traces of Classical civilization on Naxos are unlikely to overawe visitors who have wandered the Forum, held a mocoleto in Verona or wept over Palmyra. But several sites a short distance from Chora are worth visiting, including the partially-restored Temple of Demeter at Sangri, the two aforementioned Kouroi, and the Temple of Dionysus. While the Dionysus site is relatively modest, it is particularly significant within the local context because it was Dionysus, protector of Naxos, who wed the abandoned Ariadne and placed her royal crown in the heavens as the constellation Corona. As both the honeymoon resort of Dionysus and the home of young Zeus, for a time in antiquity Naxos took on the name of Dia, or “heavenly.”
BEACHES
Of course, no alleged visit to a Greek island actually occurred unless documented by a photo of mild sunburn against a backdrop of azure-emerald Aegean waters, and the many beaches of Naxos provide ample opportunity for you to produce proof. Our choices, again, came at the recommendation of our B&B hosts, who noted that the farther south (or east) you get from Chora, the greater the seclusion. Just southwest of town, Agios Prokopios is a long, sandy thing of beauty tucked in the curve of a small peninsula and thus spared the brunt of northern winds and waves. Although complete with umbrella and chair rentals, roving vendors — including an exceptional Thai masseuse — and a variety of restaurants, Prokopios doesn’t feel overly developed. Farther south is Mikri Vigla, a charming half-moon beach popular with windsurfers and kitesurfers. (On your way to Mikri Vigla, keep your eyes open for the three 19th century windmills lining the hilltop just outside the village of Tripodes, or Vivlos.) Easily the quietest of these three, Moutsouna, directly opposite Chora on the island’s sparsely-populated east side, will lull you into an introspective chastisement for having waited so long for your own detour to heavenly Naxos.
QUESTIONS FOR READERS
- Any recommendations for other Naxian towns to visit?
- If you’ve visited Naxos, Santorini and Mykonos, what do you like most about each? Least?
- Where is the very best feta to be found?
- Do you agree that the Cyclades warrant a greater share of a Greek itinerary than Athens itself does?
WANDERLOOSED 