Naxos has a wonderfully different feel from the other islands... it is somehow more raw, if that is not too foolish a thing to say, - and not just because the weather was a tad more blustery than during the rest of the trip. There was something quite special about walking across the causeway to the temple of Delian Apollo being sprayed by the waves on both sides.
Naxos town from the temple of Delian Apollo
The archaeological museum itself is a wonderful building dating back to the frankish period, and used to house a school where Nikos Kazantzakis was a student. The exhibits are scattered through a rabbit-warren of vaults, making a visit wonderful fun, - except that, alas, no photographs were allowed either me or choris flas.
So, I headed out into the country to explore. Naxos, like Paros, was famous for its marble in antiquity, and a particular highlight here are the remains of no less than three separate kouroi. These monumental statues of young men, most commonly naked, were used as funerary markers or as offerings in the great sanctuaries during the archaic period (700-500 BC). To reduce weight during transportation, the statues were often roughly carved in the quarries, and only then transported, - but something went horribly wrong in these casees. Some-one must have been a tad peeved.
Two of these kouroi are right in the middle of the island, by an unusual open-air sanctuary seemingly dedicated to the heroes of the stone-cutters, and at the source of a 11km long aqueduct that took water from the lush centre of the island down to the coast which seems at least in part to date back to the sixth century BC. All of which, like the many Naxian dedications at Delos, is strong evidence of Naxos' prosperity at this time.
Exposed remains of archaic aqueduct
The third, - and most spectacular, - though, is right in the north of the island, - but who decided to close the only petrol station that side of Naxos town?! I was coasting on empty by the time I made it back to the port...
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