I arrived by ferry and took a bus to Naoussa. Harbourfront in Naoussa Alistair Taylor-Young On a little island in the bay below, Count Orlov and Admiral Spiridoff directed the Russian campaign to control the Aegean.’ There’s history in every clod of earth you kick up, of the ancients, as you would expect, and of course Turks and Venetians and pirates such as Barbarossa, and even Russians. It brought enough wealth to make Paros a rival to Athens. If Greece is the birthplace of Western civilisation, the quarries at Marathi are its womb. And the more we looked both at and in to it, the more entranced we became. ‘It was the light, the gentle undulations, the softness. They had been to more than 20 by the time they got to Paros, which struck them immediately. Jeremy was working for a bank in Athens in the early 1980s, when flights were subsidised to the point where you could get to the islands for less than 10 dollars, and he and his girlfriend (now wife) Nayia gorged on them.
Another island regular I met, Jeremy Downward, who has a house high above Naoussa Bay, is especially fond of the little unnamed ones between Kolymbithres, with its wind-sculpted rock, and Monastiri. Dmitri, who delivered my motorbike, said his favourite isolated shore is Voutakos. Paros is ringed by beaches – loud ones, remote ones and those characterised by tavernas or water sports. They work with and never against nature, according to chronicler and Lefkes hotelier George Pittas, ‘attaching themselves limpet-like to the rocks, huddling close together in a spirit of solidarity’. These classic Cycladic hamlets are made to repel storms and invaders and withstand earthquakes. Nets are mended and octopus tenderised amid the diners. Anyone visiting will at some point stop in Naoussa – all the best restaurants are here or nearby – and despite the crowds it still feels delicate and compelling and sometimes glamorous.
Even Parikía is serene, its arcaded pathways winding through the white houses and Venetian villas. Lefkes, the loveliest of the villages, is here to its east, Prodromos and Marpissa are labyrinthine and very pretty. The mountainous centre would seem the least trodden – you can still see the Paros of a century or more ago. View west from the monastery of St Anthony in Marpissa Alistair Taylor-YoungĮach of its quadrants has a different feel: the west bustling, dominated by Parikía the north, encompassing Naoussa, more elegant the east laidback and beachy the south more rugged. ‘Then you know nothing of Paros!’ he declared. And our Ekatontapiliani, the Church of 100 Doors, in Parikía – have you been?’ I hadn’t. The story of the marble from Marathi is inseparable from the story of Paros and even of classical Greece. They say it was Rodin’s favourite marble, better for him than Carrara. ‘See how much smaller the crystals are in the lychnite?’ he said. He showed me a piece he’d made from Naxos marble and then another from the flawless white Parian version known as lychnite. Parian marble, no longer quarried, is the best, he said. He sensed beautiful and dramatic forms in the massive chunks that came his way when he made deliveries to sculptors he stayed to watch them work and when he felt ready he began to do it himself. He had been in the family building-supply business but became dissatisfied – the marble of Paros saved him. His monumental creations stood on plinths among bathroom sinks and tabletops.
Earlier that afternoon I had by chance met Christoforos’s cousin Manolis Fokianos, dealer in marble, sculptor and karate expert, at his works near Parikía, the island’s capital.
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