Overview

Largest of all the Cyclades and with the highest peaks in the group, Naxos is the central geographical hub around which they all cluster. It has a patrimony of history, archaeology and monuments which puts it among the three or four artistically richest islands in the Aegean. It offers the grandest and most varied landscapes in the Cyclades; it is rich in water and its tranquil spring-fed orchards and olive-groves in the heart of the island considerably modify our customary picture of the dry 'Cycladic landscape'. The striking beauty of the island is further enhanced by the numerous Byzantine stone churches dotted among the trees dating from the 6th to the 16th century and mostly decorated with paintings of great quality. The extraordinary unfinished kouros statues of the 6th century BC are a treasure-house of information about early sculptural techniques. The waters of the Lesser Cyclades are among the most protected in the Aegean, shielded from the north winds by the great bulk of Naxos, and they can have the appearance of a lake in the middle of a ring of mountains and hills. Almost one third of the Early Cycladic figurines known today comes from the uninhabited island of Keros. Donousa and Herakleia are havens of tranquillity, while Schinousa and Koufonisi are developing fast into centres for visitors.

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9781907859083

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Reviews of McGilchrist's Greek Islands: Delightful, well-observed, literary accompaniments to the Greek islands, by a British scholar.A The Economist,Books of the Year 2010 So evocative and informative, one hardly needs to go... Lovely...A Bettany Hughes, Sunday Herald - Books of the Year2010 A remarkable achievement - a complete, island by island, 3,000 page survey of all the historical monuments in the Aegean...A Barnaby Rogerson, Country Life Wonderful... superbly structured; immense learning elegantly, unobtrusively offered; and outstandingly well writtenA Prof. Jon Stallworthy, Wolfson College, Oxford

Author Information

Nigel McGilchrist lectures widely in art and archaeology at museums and institutions both in Europe and in the United States. He was Director of the Anglo-Italian Institute in Rome for six years, taught at the University of Rome, for the University of Massachusetts and was for seven years Dean of the joint Faculty of European Studies for a consortium of American Universities and Colleges. In recent years he has been lecturing at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California. Over the last six years he has walked every path and village of the sixty inhabited Greek Aegean islands in order to prepare the twenty volumes of McGilchrist's Greek Islands. He lives near Orvieto in Italy where he produces olive oil and red wine.

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