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Modern Description: The Cave of Antiparos (Open daily 10.45 – 3.45 pm in tours; in winter, reduced hours without tours. Admission €3), to the east of Profitis Elias, 8.5 km from Chora, has been known and admired since antiquity and visited increasingly since the 17th century. Descending steeply to a depth of over 100 metres, the space is articulated in chambers of increasing size, festooned with a remarkable density of stalactites and stalagmites. The large, slightly unprepossessing stalagmite by the entrance is said to be 45 million years old and the largest known in Europe. The quantity of names, dates, inscriptions and graffiti carved into the rock, and going back many centuries, is impressive. Earlier visitors record seeing the name of Archilochus inscribed, and a long inscription recording the names of a group of friends who visited in the ‘time of the Archon Kriton'; but these are no longer visible. The names scratched by (supposedly) Byron, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, King Otto of Greece, and countless other visitors (mostly French and German) of the 18th and 19th centuries are preserved along with others, often in beautiful calligraphy.
The path enters through an area called the antechamber, and then begins to descend steeply in a succession of staircases. At the bottom a branch leads right into the ‘Royal Hall', and left into the ‘Cathedral': it is at the extremity of the latter path, that most of the interest and the names are to be found. Ahead of where the path stops is the “altar”. It is inscribed at its base: HIC IPSE CHRISTUS ADFUIT EJUS NATALI DIE MEDIA NOCTE CELEBRATO, MDCLXXIII', recording how ‘on Christmas Day 1673, mass was celebrated' in the cave. The organiser of this mass was the French Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Charles Olier, Marquis of Nointel. He had been sent to Istanbul by Louis XIV to negotiate better trading privileges for the French with the Ottoman Sultan. On his return he went via Chios, the Cyclades and Egypt, and finally returned from Athens. He was a keen antiquarian, and collected marbles and inscriptions as he travelled. In his retinue was Jacques Carrey, whose job was to draw the antiquities along the way – and to whom we owe the vitally important sketch of the Parthenon Marbles still in situ, in their original configuration on the building, before they were removed by Lord Elgin. By all accounts the mass held here was an extraordinary occasion, with the cave illuminated with flares, the altar decked out with liturgical paraphernalia, fireworks at the entrance at the moment the Host was consecrated, the sound of musical instruments, and the clearly eccentric marquis presiding over what must have been a logistically complicated piece of theatre, requiring much planning and forethought. The arrival of such a grand retinue in the half-abandoned Antiparos of the 17th century, must have been a source of wonderment to the few local inhabitants.
Wikidata ID: Q16328668
Trismegistos Geo: 33239

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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