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Modern Description: Paros produced what is considered traditionally to be the best quality of marble for sculpture in the world. Many of the greatest sculptures of Antiquity, from the korai of the Athenian acropolis to the Hermes of Praxiteles, are in Parian marble. The island became prosperous and full of outward-looking initiative as a result. Paros and its outlying islands have a rich prehistoric archaeology, which begins with the settlement on Saliagos dating from the 5th millennium BC. An important settlement at Koukounariés dates from the last years of the Mycenaean period; after its destruction in the 12th century BC, the site was re-inhabited and seems to have prospered during the Geometric era. The island was colonised by Ionians, and in the 7th century BC established its own colony on Thasos – an expedition in which one of the greatest poets of early Greek literature, Archilochus, participated. Thasos brought her mother-city great wealth, and Paros enjoyed its golden age of influence and creativity in the early 6th century BC. By the end of the 6th century BC the island was under the dominion of Naxos. In 490 BC, Paros sent a trireme with the invading Persian fleet, an action which brought upon it a retaliatory attack by Athens, under Miltiades, after the Battle of Marathon. Paros did not contribute to the defeat of Xerxes in 480 BC, and afterwards became subject to Athens. During the Peloponnesian War it tried to shake off Athenian dominion, failed, and was assessed to pay the highest tribute of the confederation, namely 18 talents annually. Free for a brief period after 403 BC, it was incorporated in the second Athenian League in 377 BC, and came under Macedonian influence after 357 BC. From 100 BC, Paros was part of the Roman Eparchy of Asia. Both Agorakritos in the 5th, and Scopas in the 4th century BC, were sculptors from Paros: Scopas was one the greatest of his age, and worked on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The visit in 326 AD of St Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, resulted in the building on Paros of one of the most important churches in the Aegean, the Panaghia Katapolianí, often called ‘Ekatontapylianí' or ‘Church of a Hundred Gates'. Justinian rebuilt the church more grandly in the 6th century, probably after a fire had destroyed the original Constantinian structure.
As a favoured base for Saracens and pirates during the 8th and 9th centuries, the island became poorer and dramatically less populated. Its fortunes revived when it was taken by Marco Sanudo in 1207 into the Duchy of Naxos; in 1260 the Kastro was built in Parikia. In the 15th century, the capital was moved to the castle on the hill of Kephala on the east coast of the island, which was believed to be easier to defend against the increasing pressure of Turkish attacks. In 1537 Khaireddin Barbarossa laid siege to the castle and captured it in four days. The island was to remain under Turkish dominion, with an administrative centre at Lefkes, for almost 300 years. Piracy once again flourished, and Hugues Creveliers, the original of Byron's Corsair, was one of the many celebrated pirates who operated from Paros in the 17th century. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74, Naousa became the naval base for the Russian Aegean fleet of Count Alexei Orloff. Paros was re-united with the fledgling Greek State in 1832.
The island's capital of Parikiá, built over the city of ancient Paros, spreads on the east side of a wide bay, protected by a hook of land which curves round to the north of it. In antiquity some of the hill-tops ranged around were crowned with sanctuaries and temples; today whitewashed monasteries and churches have taken their place. The focus of the city, then as now, was a low hill by the shore just south of the port, from where habitation spread east into the shallow, fertile valley inland which possessed good water below the surface, accessible through wells.
...A street leads uphill to the Kastro, whose walls made from hundreds of ancient spolia and fragments are glimpsed ahead. The northern side of the hill of Kastro was occupied in prehistory by a settlement of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. Later, from the 6th century BC onwards, the eminence was the site of the sanctuary of Athena (?Poliouchos, or ‘Protector of the City'). This included an imposingly large temple put up when Paros was under the domination of Naxos and its tyrant Lygdamis, in the 520's BC. Its construction is contemporary, therefore, with the unfinished structure of the ‘Portara' on Naxos; in fact deductions made from the measurements of fragments incorporated into the walls of the Venetian castle now built on its site, indicate that it may have had a doorway commensurate with the Portara. The hill has substantially eroded on its western side due to seismic activity, and two thirds of the temple lies buried under the sea below. The remains that are visible, in and under the church of Aghios Konstantinos, represent only its eastern extremity (the front), before which would have stood the altar. The marble temple was an Ionic-style building, with two six-column porticos to either end (i.e. amphiprostyle), supporting an undecorated trabeation, pediments and a pitched roof. Climbing up to the Kastro from the waterfront, you come immediately to the stacked rows of drafted gneiss slabs which constituted the platform of the temple: the temple itself was constructed of white Parian marble, which contrasted with the green-grey schist of the podium. Inside the church of Aghios Konstantinos (entered through the adjacent church of the Evangelistria to the south), several courses of the lateral walls of the temple's cella, in rectangular marble blocks, can be seen constituting the lower part of the north wall. Over the church's carved west door-frame is a cross made from Iznik tiles: only the upper arm of the cross is of antique (16th century) tiles, the others are modern reproductions. The adjoining 18th century church of the Evangelístria (Annunciation) has a low arcaded porch on its southern side, supported by Early Christian window elements coming from the Basilica at Tris Ekklesies. In the street which curves northwards from the church, ancient spolia are so abundant that column drums are used as tables in the porches of houses.
On the left side of this street, rise the walls of the Venetian castle, built around 1260 by Angelo and Marco (II) Sanudo. A good half of the castle has suffered the erosion of the west side of the hill and has finished in the sea together with the temple of Athena, leaving the northeast corner as the best preserved sector. It is constructed from hundreds of marble blocks, architraves and columns obtained by demolishing temples and other ancient structures on the site. The phenomenon is common all over the Mediterranean, but the scale of it here is breathtaking: it is hard to imagine (though historically ingenuous) that the elimination of what must have been majestic, if ruined, marble temples and their conversion into masonry for a fortress with such a paucity of architectural quality to it, did not give the 13th century builders some twinge of regret. The walls are nonetheless a fascinating mosaic of ancient pieces; in which long rows of column drums on their sides, alternate with courses of rectangular blocks, incorporating 5m-long elements of the temple's marble portal: at other points there are (partial) inscriptions on blocks and elements of decorated cornice. The marble is Parian, but comes from areas of the quarries where it is delicately veined with grey. This was ‘constructional grade' marble, as opposed to the pure white which was of ‘sculptural grade'. Apart from the material from the temple of Athena, elements were also taken from an Archaic temple of Persephone and Kore within the ancient city (according to Gottfried Gruben), as well as from a long Doric stoa of the Hellenistic period, and possibly the temple of Demeter outside the city which is mentioned by Herodotus (VI, 134). One curiosity, visible from the south, high up at the top of the northeast bastion, is a round, 4th century BC, tower-like structure or tholos, originally dedicated to Hestia, goddess of the hearth: its shape served as a ready-made apse for the church of Christos which was built around it, high up inside the bastion. The church was partially removed by archaeologists a century ago, so as to reveal the ancient structure. From below, it is possible to see the overall curve in the walls which gave the fortress, a slightly elliptical form. The four churches in the northeast corner, from south to north are: the Panaghia tou Stavrou, built in 1514 and the oldest church in Parikia, Aghia Ekaterini, Aghios Ioannis and the Evangelistria (1752). Between Aghia Ekaterini and Aghios Ioannis, the southeastern wall of the latter is ‘buttressed' on the outside by a fluted column lying at its base and covered in countless layers of whitewash.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paros_(city)
Wikidata ID: Q65040323
Trismegistos Geo: 1613

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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