Overview

The landscape of Amorgos invites dramatic settings. Few other islands combine as succinctly so much history and landscape and important archaeology as Amorgos. Walking on the island is perhaps the greatest pleasure it affords. The three cities founded in historic times - tactfully distanced from one another so as to divide the island into three equal parts - all occupy exhilarating summits or promontories. Two thousand years later, monks fleeing Arab incursions into Palestine took refuge on the island and established their community in the most impossible site of all - the Panaghia Chozoviotissa Monastery, half-way up a 400m precipice above the sea, is one of the most unforgettable sites of the Aegean. Ios has a picturesque Cycladic chora and a number of the finest beaches in the Aegean. The island's solitary beauty and grandeur have been compromised in recent years by the construction of roads and a boom in tourism. Recent changes in the local administration suggest that there is a will to redress some of the damage done to the island's traditional social structure. Sikinos is a remarkably tranquil island with much of its mountainous landscape wild and scarcely accessible. One of the most interesting and best-preserved Roman monuments in the Cyclades is the Monastery of Episkopi, a grand mausoleum which has survived by being converted into a Christian church. The settlements of Ancient Sikinos and at Palaiokastro are both remarkable for the alarming perpendicularity of their sites. Few islands can boast a more attractive and dramatically sited chora than Folegandros, with its compact mediaeval centre and a chain of beautiful shaded squares. The island is delightful, with several civilised places to stay, pleasant cafes and many attractive beaches. There are a number of interesting walks along the island's network of stone-paved mule paths with majestic cliffs on all sides.

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9781907859144

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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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