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Modern Description: Just to the E of Cape Zoster and the S end of Mt. Hymettos is a small plain, in area little more than 3.2 km deep and 1.6 km wide, its limits clearly marked by the sea to the S, Hymettos to the W, and lesser hills to N and E. Until recently the plain's center of habitation was at Vari, a town centrally located at the place where the coastal road from Athens enters the plain on its W edge through a natural break in the long chain of Hymettos. Today a second, rapidly expanding, community has been established at the seashore, with the name of Varkiza.
In Classical antiquity this plain was in all probability the deme of Anagyrous, placed by Strabo in his list of coastal demes after Halai Aixonides (with a sanctuary at Zoster) but before Thorai (9.1.21), and described by Pausanias as having as a notable feature a shrine of the Mother of the Gods (1.31.1). While the position of this last has not been established, no doubt surrounds the location of the deme-center: It was at Vari, where a great variety of remains have been unearthed, many illicitly. Even so, the picture they present is one of a city-state in miniature.
Lower down Lathouriza hill, on a ridge overlooking the town, is a group of more than 20 closely set buildings of various shapes--circular, rectangular, apsidal--;from the archaic period, whence were recovered literally thousands of offerings of terracotta and metal. Some, if not most, of these structures must have been places of popular worship. In another part of the hill, at the same level, is the foundation of a small Classical sanctuary. On the hill's lowest slopes, to the E there are copious remains of walls and building blocks from the living quarters of the Classical settlement of Anargyrous. To the N of Lathouriza hill, alongside the road from Athens, is a large cemetery with well preserved grave-terraces of the 5th and 4th c. B.C. A second, and more important, cemetery lies a little to the N of Vari, where graves and grave-enclosures from Late Geometric to late archaic times have been either excavated or pillaged. From here comes much of the remarkable collection of early Attic black-figure pottery displayed in the National Museum at Athens. These funerary offerings, as well as some sculptured monuments originally from the same area, make it obvious that in the archaic period Vari must have been home for at least one rich aristocratic family.
A few isolated structures, probably farmhouses, have been noticed elsewhere in the plain. One of these, on the same slope of Hymettos as the Cave of the Nymphs but lower, on a spur above a narrow valley entered from the plain, has been recently excavated. It was a rural villa, of the pastas type, with its rooms built around three sides of a courtyard and screened by porticos. It had a short existence, ca. 330-280 B.C. An extensive Mycenaean chamber tomb cemetery (1500-1200 BC).
A notable settlement with a sanctuary and houses (7th-5th century BC) has been excavated on Lathouriza hill. At the top are a double temple with altar, a circular building/platform and houses surrounded by an enclosure. Richly furnished graves have been discovered at various places in Vari and Varkiza. The finds are housed in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagyrous
Wikidata ID: Q4750861
Trismegistos Geo: 37723
Manto: 11025128

Info: Princeton Encyclopedia

(Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, from Perseus Project)

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