At home with the gods on Naxos

I was told by several people before I left for Greece last summer that each Greek island has its own personality and no two are alike. This is true, but some islands, like some Greek gods, are better company than others.

Hades, the god of the underworld, would not be my idea of a hot date. I would tire quickly of well-buffed Ares, god of war, and the high jinks of the divine messenger-prankster Hermes. But give me artistic, curly-haired Apollo, looking over Naxos from his temple on the nearby island of Delos, and I would gladly step into his sun chariot.

Having escaped the island of Mykonos, a disco-thumping haven for gorgeous 20-year-olds, my husband, Lewis, and I found ourselves sailing on one of the many Greek island ferryboats into Naxos, the main town that shares the same name as the island.

Two high peaks cradled a lush green saddle between them, and beyond that were higher mountains, bluish-gray in the distance. According to legend, Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, helped the Greek superhero Theseus weave his way through her father’s treacherous labyrinth and kill the Minotaur. Theseus whisked Ariadne to Naxos and then abandoned her. However, the beautiful heroine was rescued by Dionysus, god of wine and pastoral free spirit.

As we sailed into the harbor of Naxos town, sometimes called Chora, I too felt the gods -- the ones I preferred -- were with me on this four-day visit.

At 165 square miles, Naxos is the largest island in the Cyclades, a group of islands southeast of Athens, closer to the Turkish coast than to mainland Greece. At first glimpse, it was apparent that the island had been invaded many times. On Palatia, a tiny peninsula jutting out near the port, is the Portara, a large marble arch built for Apollo around 530 BC by the tyrant-ruler Lygdamis. He never completed the temple because he was run out of town by the Spartans.

In the middle of Naxos a Frankish fortress and castle built in the 13th century rise above the clutches of white buildings on the hillside. Brightly colored sailboats bobbing along a pier lined with restaurants show signs of the newest invaders -- tourists. But unlike the conquering armies before, they have not yet destroyed Naxos.

Tourism is a mainstay in the Greek islands, but often the overwhelming eagerness to please visitors comes at the expense of the islands’ soul. Even a tourist will complain occasionally. An elegant elderly man from South Africa who stayed at our hotel in Mykonos, as he had for years, sat in the garden and lamented, “People around here used to play Greek music. Now nothing. I never hear it.”

Because Naxos is bigger than its northern neighbor, with more room for tourists to disperse, the struggle to maintain its Greek soul has been less difficult. Still, it’s not easy.

One person fighting to preserve Naxos’ gentle spirit is Nikolas Karavias, descendant of a longtime island family, the Della Rocca-Barozzis.

My husband and I met Karavias on our first day on Naxos, during a late afternoon walk in the Kastro, the castle and fortress that dominate the island. We wandered winding streets, passing under stone arches and stairs that curved around whitewashed houses and balconies decorated with red geraniums and strings of gourds. He was sitting in an office next to a small courtyard of the castle and selling tickets to a Sunday evening concert. A bit harried, he flung out instructions in Greek, German, Italian and English as a crush of people stood in line, their euros in hand. We bought a couple of tickets, but before we sat down, we picked up a few glasses of free wine. On a small stage, two violinists and a lutenist were warming up.

“What you hear down below,” Karavias said, referring to music coming from the touristy beachfront, “is Turkish belly-dancing music. We will be playing Hellenistic music from the Byzantine tradition. These are songs of love, life in the country and adventures of the sea.”

The music undulated and trilled. The setting sun transformed the wall of the fortress to a brilliant gold. Palm trees rustled, and the sky turned to lapis lazuli, the color of the stone eyes of a Minoan bull I had seen in a museum.

Then the dancers entered, the women in blue tunics and skirts with white aprons and the men in black vests and pants, red belts and fishermen’s caps. They joined hands by grasping white handkerchiefs, which, Karavias explained, represent nets. The dancers wove among and around one another, emulating nets tangling in the waves. During the performance, ushers with flasks circulated, refilling our glasses with Naxiot red and white wines and Kitron, a regional liqueur in our choice of lemon or mint. We chose both.

To understand Karavias’ passion for Naxos, you must know his family’s place in the island’s long history. Naxos’ first inhabitants, around 3000 BC, were known for advanced stone artwork and metal tools. Conquerors came and went: the Mycenaean Greeks, the Spartans, the Persians, the Romans, the Byzantines and the Franks. In 1202 the Venetians arrived as part of the Fourth Crusade on their way to sack Constantinople. Venetian Marco Sanudo captured the Cyclades and, in an attempt to unify the islands, created the Duchy of the Aegean. The Venetians held power for more than 300 years until the Ottoman Turks invaded in 1566.

Karavias’ French-Venetian family has been on the island since the Fourth Crusade, and its home inside the fortress has been protected by its sturdy walls for centuries. He is caretaker of his ancestral home, the Domus Della Rocca-Barozzi. Also called the Venetian Museum, it houses family treasures of silverware and porcelain, wrought-iron beds and lace dressing gowns. Karavias also supports local artists; their paintings, in bright modern colors, complement the somber antiques.

We sat drinking Kitron with Karavias on the stone steps of a small cellar, which had housed monks in one era and was a torture chamber in another.

“You work 340, 355 days of the year ... you want to have a good time,” he said. “Tourists here are our guests. They should not,” he added, “change who we are.”

Change is slow in coming, judging from the looks of the quiet neighborhood where we stayed. Our small studio apartment at the Hotel Argo had a veranda that faced an alley of white houses with blue or yellow trim. An occasional Vespa zipped by, often driven by a young man with a girlfriend in tow. Sundown spawned the buzz of children’s impromptu soccer games.

History’s traces on the land

Early the next morning we rented a car, then took off for the countryside. Brown grass and blue-green sagebrush covered the slopes, punctuated by tiny white churches that looked like thimbles dropped randomly between the folds of mountains and on peaks. We saw vineyards so lush that the terraced hills seemed wrapped in grape leaves.

Ruins from different eras are spread out over Naxos’ landscape. Medieval castles lie crumbled on peaks. Marble towers built by Hellenistic Greeks have collapsed into jagged stone cylinders. Byzantine monasteries, stone citadels with decorative pronged battlements in a design borrowed from the Franks, seemed more plentiful than trees.

We arrived at the tiny whitewashed village of Ano Potamia at a moment of silence, except for the rattle of worry beads coming from a nearby taverna. Its main street, like most main thoroughfares on Naxos, ran along a ridge filled with wild geraniums and patches of nopal cactus budding with yellow flowers. Kittens skittered in a small alley between white houses and trellises of bougainvillea. Church bells rang, and the door of a small chapel opened. A funeral procession emerged, carrying a casket to the cemetery. If the afterlife is prettier than this little town, I thought, heaven is fine indeed.

We decided to take in one more sight before lunch, the Temple of Demeter near the village of Ano Sangri. A footpath up a low, wind-swept hill led to a cluster of Ionic pillars, three of which were joined by a carved ceiling frieze. In front of the temple were shallow marble pits where, in 800 BC, worshipers of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, burned crops as offerings.

Lewis and I stopped for a late lunch at Kastani Grill, a small taverna in Filoti. A leafy tree shaded our outdoor table from the sun. The enticing food came on small plates -- stuffed tomatoes with rice, seasoned meatballs in red sauce, lamb sausage, eggplant salad, yogurt and cucumber tzatziki. We topped the whole thing off with wine that came from the vineyards in back of the restaurant.

In the late afternoon we took a winding road along the mountainous, less populated eastern side of the island. The roadside dropped off steeply into a canyon. Some of the hills revealed granite spines from various geologic ordeals. The cliffs on this side of the island are full of caves: some just small openings in clusters of boulders, some large enough to have been the home of the one-eyed Cyclops.

The next day we descended into the past at the Naxos Archeological Museum, which features the funeral shrines of an ancient Mycenean city. Worshipers placed their dead in large clay boxes; on top of them they burned offerings of food in whitish kaolin-coated pottery, and then they covered the graves with clay slabs. Centuries of this layering have raised the ground level.

Across the square from the museum is one very-much-alive legacy from Byzantium. I stepped quietly into the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Mary of the Giving Spring during afternoon services. From the outside, the church is simple and white, but inside it is pure ornate beauty. The front wall next to the altar has two rows of icons, burnished portraits of saints with olive skin and red and blue robes inlaid with gold. From the center of the church, a group of women went one by one to kiss the icons. I understood little of the service, but I was still moved by the sonorous chants of the priest as he swung a silver censer around the room.

To make our stay in the Cyclades complete, we visited Delos, an island just to the north off the southwestern tip of Mykonos. The mythical home of Apollo was so sacred that even the Persians bypassed it on their way to attack Athens in 492 BC. A small, dry island with mosaics, temples and stone labyrinths, it is where the ancient Naxiots turned when they thought of their gods; in a sense, it was their Mecca.

Many of the ruins scattered on the tawny landscape still contain the marble torsos of gods. Others have shady porticoes and sturdy pillars. In the most impressive sculpture, the Terrace of the Lions, a row of stone beasts bare their teeth as they have done for centuries.

Taking the ferry back to Naxos and watching it emerge from the sea into the mountainous beauty that first caught my eye, I knew that four days was not enough on this captivating island coveted by so many gods and kings.

Nikos Kazantzakis, Naxiot author of “Zorba the Greek,” said that his island, “though turbulent at times, never raised a true tempest.” Naxos, with true aplomb, seems to have seen it all.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Lighting on Naxos

GETTING THERE:

From LAX, Lufthansa, Swiss, Delta, Air France, KLM and British Airways have connecting service (change of planes) to Athens. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,268. From Athens to Naxos, Olympic has daily flights. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $126.

From Piraeus (the port of Athens), Blue Star Ferries, 5 25th August St., 71202 Heraklion, Crete; 011-30-2810-346-185 or 011-30-2810-330598, fax 011-30-2810-346-208, www.ferries.gr. Boats make daily runs to Naxos. Round-trip fares begin at $22.

TELEPHONES:

To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 30 (country code for Greece), 22850 and the local number.

WHERE TO STAY:

Hotel Argo, St. George Beach; 25330, fax 24910, wwwthegreektravel.com/naxos/argo. This hotel, where we stayed, was wonderful, with whitewashed walls and blue shutters. Our room had a small stove, refrigerator and balcony. Doubles $23-$53.

Hotel Grotta, Naxos town 84300; 22215, fax 22000, www.hotelgrotta.gr. Pretty, clean and overlooks the Portara arch. Doubles $82, including breakfast.

WHERE TO EAT:

In Naxos town, the Protopapadaki, the main street along the port, has a row of outdoor restaurants. I loved Irini’s, 26780, where I had stuffed eggplant and Greek salad with a large slab of feta cheese.

Apolafsis, 22178, has balcony dining facing the harbor. Its specialties include spinach tart, fresh fish and pork slices in wine sauce. Entrees $9-$13; no credit cards.

In Filoti we ate at the Kastani Grill, on the main street. Our lunch was less than $14 apiece.

TO LEARN MORE:

Greek National Tourist Organization, 645 Fifth Ave., Suite 903, New York, NY 10022; (212) 421-5777, fax (212) 826-6940, www.greektourism.com.

-- Kathleen de Azevedo