Aspros Pyrgos (Siphnos) Platys Gialos

Aspros Pyrgos, large Classical (?) tower and cistern E of Platys Gialos, Siphnos, Cyclades
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Latitude: 36.932600
Longitude: 24.738000
Confidence: High

Place ID: 369247FAPy
Time period: C
Region: Cyclades
Country: Greece
Department: Milos/Siphnos
Mod: Platys Gialos

- Pleiades
- IDAI gazetteer ID

Modern Description: The (main) right branch of the road after Vrysianí, continues south and at 5 km branches right for the Monastery of the Panghia tou Vounoú (5.7 km) (Open daily in summer, 11am-2 pm), a 19th century foundation built in the customary fortified manner with machicolations above the door, on the spur of a hill overlooking the Bay of Platys Gialos. In the catholicon, which enshrines a miraculous icon, are ancient columns. The much wider vantage point of the spur to its south east is occupied by the island's earliest and most magnificent ancient tower, the Aspros Pyrgos or ‘White Tower' (reached by a track left from the main road at 6.8 km). This was a multi-purpose tower and has many interesting features still visible in situ. Given the vicinity of ancient (?)gold and silver mine galleries immediately to the south and east, the tower's primary function was protection and safe-storage: the position also affords a wide-sweeping view of the area's coasts and harbours, giving the structure value also as a watchtower. It has an uninterrupted sightline to the acropolis of Aghios Andreas. The dimensions are large; the diameter exceeds 13 metres. Both the material and the method of construction with large, regular and trapezoidal blocks, suggest a date around 500 BC for the tower. The clear white marble, which rendered the tower more visible and useful as a landmark to mariners, does not appear to be the native stone and may have had to have been brought from Paros (this applies especially to the high-quality, white marble used for the doorway).
The construction has many refinements and unusual features: the drafting and chiseling of the blocks of the outer face; an inner lining in smaller stones; a corbelled staircase, with ten steps still surviving, in the interior; a substantial cistern recessed beneath the floor. A carefully crafted, stone olive-press block, with channels for the liquid, and other pieces clearly related to mechanical machinery, suggest an agricultural use for the tower, perhaps in a later (Hellenistic) phase. In fact the inner walls, which divide the interior into three areas could possibly be a later addition, though still antique. Of particular note is the doorway on the south east side, which has been cut and shaped for the fitting and locking of the door: it conserves two large, protruding, vertical stone rings, integral with the wall, on the inside to hold a transom for blocking the door. The curved walls of the interior must have meant that the ‘travel' distance of the transom was limited, however, suggesting that it may have been of metal.

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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