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Modern Description: Following the branch road south and east down the mountainside into the next bay along (1km), the *ancient quarry of Petrokopió, with its abandoned shipments of cut stone on the beach, soon comes into view—clear and gleaming like an image from a painting by De Chirico. This is one of the best-preserved and most instructive ancient quarries in the Aegean area—fascinating and moving even for the non-specialist, for the picture it gives of ancient industry. The quarry itself is large and divided into two principal zones by a sharp wedge-like projection of natural rock. The signs of working, and the sharply shelving ledges are visible on all sides. The latest area to be opened would appear to be just outside the main quarry to the seaward side. At the entrance on the shore below are the abandoned pieces awaiting shipment—column drums, capitals, a large sarcophagus (unhollowed), corner elements for an architrave—all stacked together to one side. They do not yet have any of the detailed carving which they would have been given at their final destination: their contours have been softened by wind erosion. Some distance away, in the rocky north corner of the bay is a single column drum (visible as you descend the last few metres of the road): this may indicate that the blocks were rafted over to this point to be loaded in the greater depth of water here which better accommodated the draught of the barges. The marble of Petrokopió has a very pure and vein-less white colour, but with an icier and slightly more bluish tinge to it than Naxiot and Parian marble. It patinates naturally, however, with a warm, rosy ochre colour, which can be observed here in the quarry, as well as in the marble sarcophagus in the plateia of Foúrni town. This was a large and productive quarry, and much of the marble which came from it was used in buildings in Ephesus. The beach is composed solely of naturally smoothed and bleached pebbles of this pure and crystalline material.

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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