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Modern Description: A stepped path leads up and inland through Xylokeratidi. Immediately after passing the St. George Varsamitis Hotel on your right, a Mycenaean cemetery is signposted. Follow the dirt road up the hillside. After the first switchback, the best tomb is on your right above the road (but best reachable from above). Most of the tombs, which date from the 13th and 12th centuries bc, have been disfigured with erosion but two remain with the excavated chamber and a clear-cut dromos aligned a few degrees south of due east.
On the hill beyond, is the church of the Evangelismós (Annunciation), one of the oldest surviving churches on the island – dating from as early as the 9th century on the basis of vestiges of aniconic painting in its interior. (Returning from the Mycenaean cemetery to the stone kalderimi, keeping always left, the path climbs the ridge between two gulleys. The church is hidden low in the western gulley. 20 minutes by foot.) The design is a dome on a square with a curious transverse barrel-vault tacked on to the east. The door in the south wall has been re-opened in recent times.

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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