APEIRANTHOS: THE MARBLE VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF NAXOS

Leave the coast behind and climb into the interior of Naxos, and somewhere along the road the air thins, the terraces tighten, and the whitewash of the Cyclades gives way to something greyer, older and harder. Apeiranthos — also written Apiranthos, or Aperathos, and known to its own people as t’ Aperathou — sits on the slopes of Mount Fanari at roughly 600 metres, some 25 to 28 kilometres from Chora. It is the second-largest village on the island after Filoti, yet it counts well under a thousand permanent residents, and it is built, quite literally, of Naxos itself: marble for the lintels, the staircases, the arches and the lanes.

A Village with Its Own Voice

What sets Apeiranthos apart from its neighbours is audible before it is visible. The local idiom, the customs and the music have long struck visitors and scholars as closer to the mountain villages of Crete than to the rest of the Cyclades: speakers are known to soften the “r” into an “l” in the Cretan manner, and Cretan lyra and lute still accompany local feasts. Some historians have therefore argued that the village was founded by Cretans around the 10th century, although that dating is an inference from dialect and tradition rather than a documented fact; other accounts add that settlers also arrived from elsewhere, including Asia Minor. The first firm written evidence of the village is from 1420, when the Italian traveller Cristoforo Buondelmonti mentioned it in his Liber insularum archipelagi. The village is also affectionately called “the village that writes poetry,” a reputation that has more to do with its habit of verse and storytelling than with any single poet.

Marble Underfoot: Lanes, Arches and Towers

Naxos has quarried and carved marble since antiquity, and Apeiranthos is where that tradition left its mark on everyday life rather than on temples. Walls, window frames, steps and paving are worked in stone, the lanes are polished smooth by centuries of footsteps, and many of them pass beneath vaulted arches that knit the two-storey houses together. Doors and windows are framed by carved marble lintels, a feature typical of Naxian tower architecture generally. The village has been protected as a traditional settlement since 1978, and its architecture has survived largely intact from the era of Venetian rule.

The Zevgolis Tower is the landmark you meet first. Built on a rock at the entrance to the village on its main road, it is a two-storey stone mansion of the 17th century that was originally associated with the Kastri family, whose lion crest is carved above the main doorway. An inscription records that it belonged to the Sommaripa family in 1677, and it passed to the Zevgolis family after the Greek Revolution of 1821. It remains a private home, used mostly in summer; visitors are reportedly welcomed onto its arches, verandas and balconies when the owners are in residence, so treat access as a courtesy rather than a right. Further into the village stands the Bardani tower, also called the Sforza-Castri tower, smaller and generally less visited.

Panagia Aperathitissa and the Shepherd’s Icon

At the entrance to the village stands the church of Panagia Aperathitissa, recognisable by a triple bell tower of white marble; its altar screen and carved details are marble too. Local tradition holds that a shepherd found an icon of the Virgin Mary near the shore at Azalas and carried it toward the village, and that the icon repeatedly “chose” its own resting places, so that the church was finally built on the spot where it was found the morning after the shepherd had left it elsewhere. Sources differ on the date of the present building: the island’s official tourism information places it in the 18th century, while other guides give 1819. The feast of the Assumption on 15 August is the great gathering of the village year, and the stone-paved churchyard often hosts local celebrations.

A Village of Small Museums

For a place of this size, Apeiranthos is unusually well supplied with museums. Depending on how they are counted, the village offers five: an Archaeological Collection with finds from the south-east of Naxos, including Early Cycladic pottery, tools and carvings; a Geological Museum; a Natural History Museum, housed at the church; a Folklore Museum; and a Visual Arts museum, with some listings also naming a small museum of children’s culture. Several of them share the village’s cultural centre, and a combined ticket has been offered for four of them. Opening days, hours and prices change from season to season, and the Archaeological Collection is reportedly closed on Tuesdays, so confirm locally before planning a visit around them.

Two other institutions say as much about the village as its museums do. The Nikos Glezos library, founded in 1964 and widely described as the largest in the Cyclades, is dedicated to the brother of Manolis Glezos, who was executed by the Germans in 1944. And the Traditional Art Cooperative of the Women of Apeiranthos, established in 1987 on the initiative of Manolis Glezos while he was president of the community, keeps the village’s weaving and embroidery alive — a good place to buy something that was actually made here.

Manolis Glezos and Other Native Sons

Apeiranthos is the birthplace of Manolis Glezos (1922–2020), the writer and politician best remembered for the night of 30–31 May 1941, when he and Apostolos Santas climbed the Acropolis and tore down the swastika flag raised by the German occupiers a month earlier — one of the first acts of resistance in occupied Europe. Both were sentenced to death in absentia, and Glezos spent many years afterwards in prison and exile for his left-wing convictions. The village was also the home of Petros Protopapadakis (1854–1922), who served as Prime Minister of Greece. Neither fact needs embroidering; they are simply the kind of history that a village of this size does not usually carry.

Emery, Windmills and the Mountain’s Working Past

The mountain economy of eastern Naxos once depended on emery, a hard abrasive rock quarried in many mines across the area and used for millstones and, once ground and mixed with oil and water, for polishing metals and stone. The emery was carried down to the coast at Moutsouna, about nine kilometres from Apeiranthos, which served as the village’s port. A restored windmill on the hill opposite the village, the Frantzeskos mill, was reportedly built in 1901 and worked until 1955; it is a quiet reminder of how thoroughly this was once a working landscape. Today Moutsouna is a peaceful stretch of coast and a natural second stop after the mountains.

Visiting Apeiranthos Today

By car, the village is roughly 40 minutes from Chora on a mountain road; the KTEL bus also runs from Chora via Galanado, Chalki and Filoti, though the timetable changes with the season and is worth checking at the Chora terminal. There are two main car parks, at Panagia opposite the cemetery and at Psarri Plaka, with a couple of smaller ones. Allow at least two to three hours: the real pleasure of Apeiranthos is not any single sight but the unhurried walk along its main lane, past the towers and arches, up to the shaded squares where the cafes and tavernas gather. Wear shoes with grip, because the marble is smooth and the steps are many, and go in the morning if you want the museums open and the lanes quiet. A tourist map with suggested routes is posted in the lower part of the village.

Eat here, if you can. The mountain villages are the best place on the island to try Naxos’s PDO gruyère and local cured meats, and tavernas in the village serve local dishes such as rosto, pork slow-roasted in wine, tomatoes, herbs and garlic. Because the village is lived in rather than staged, a respectful approach — quiet voices, no wandering into courtyards that are clearly private — suits it best.

Nearby: The Naxos Mountain Villages

Apeiranthos pairs naturally with the other villages of the interior. Filoti, the island’s largest village, lies on the same road and offers some of the finest views over the valley; Chalki, with its Venetian towers and old Byzantine churches, sits a little further toward Chora; and Mount Fanari rises directly behind. For a coastal counterpoint, descend east to Moutsouna. And for the other end of the island’s story — the fortified citadel where Venetian families still keep house — read our guide to the Kastro of Naxos.

Most of Naxos asks to be seen by the sea. Apeiranthos asks to be heard and walked: the Cretan cadence of the dialect, the click of shoes on polished stone, the bell of a marble tower in a village that has produced a prime minister and a national hero out of fewer than a thousand people. It is the island’s most complete answer to the question of what a Cycladic village can be when it is built from the mountain rather than the whitewash — and a day well spent away from the beach.