Paros


Paros is a Greek island in the central Aegean Sea and part of the Cyclades island group. It lies 8 kilometers west of Naxos, separated by a narrow channel and about south-east of Piraeus. The Municipality of Paros covers about, including numerous uninhabited offshore islets. Its closest neighbor is the municipality of Antiparos, located to the southwest. In ancient Greece, the island was home to the city-state of Paros.
Historically, Paros was known for its fine white marble, which gave rise to the term Parian to describe marble or china of similar qualities. Today, working marble quarries and mines can be found on the island, but Paros is primarily known as a popular tourist spot.

Geography

Paros' geographic coordinates are 37° N. latitude, and 25° 10' E. longitude. The area is. Its greatest length from N.E. to S.W. is, and its greatest breadth. The island is of a round, plump-pear shape, formed by a single mountain sloping evenly down on all sides to a maritime plain, which is broadest on the north-east and south-west sides. The island is composed of marble, though gneiss and mica-schist are to be found in a few places. To the west of Paros lies its smaller sister island Antiparos. At its narrowest, the channel between the two islands is less than wide. A car-carrying shuttle-ferry operates all day. In addition a dozen smaller islets surround Paros.
Paros has numerous beaches including Golden Beach near Drios on the east coast, at Pounda, Logaras, Piso Livadi, Naousa Bay, Parikia and Agia Irini. The constant strong wind in the strait between Paros and Naxos makes it a favoured windsurfing location. Paros is also a popular tourist destination in the Cyclades, known for its beaches, traditional villages, and cultural events.

Islands

  • Gaidouronisi – north of Xifara
  • Portes Island – west of the town of Paros
  • Tigani Island – southwest of Paros
  • Drionisi – southeast of Paros

    History

Antiquity

The story that Paros of Parrhasia colonized the island with Arcadians is an etymological fiction of the type that abounds in Greek legends. Ancient names of the island are said to have been Plateia, Demetrias, Strongyle, Hyria, Hyleessa, Minoa and Cabarnis.
The island later received from Athens a colony of Ionians under whom it attained a high degree of prosperity. It sent out colonies to Thasos and Parium on the Hellespont. In the former colony, which was planned in the 15th or 18th Olympiad, the poet Archilochus, a native of Paros, is said to have taken part. As late as 385 BC the Parians, in conjunction with Dionysius of Syracuse, founded a colony on the Illyrian island of Pharos.
Shortly before the Persian War, Paros seems to have been a dependency of Naxos. In the first Greco-Persian War, Paros sided with the Persians and sent a trireme to Marathon to support them. In retaliation, the capital was besieged by an Athenian fleet under Miltiades, who demanded a fine of 100 talents. But the town offered a vigorous resistance, and the Athenians were obliged to sail away after a siege of 26 days, during which they had wasted the island. It was at a temple of Demeter Thesmophoros in Paros that Miltiades received the wound from which he died. By means of an inscription, Ludwig Ross was able to identify the site of the temple; it lies, as Herodotus suggests, on a low hill beyond the boundary of the town.
Paros also sided with shahanshah Xerxes I of Persia against Greece in the second Greco-Persian War, but, after the Battle of Artemisium, the Parian contingent remained inactive at Kythnos as they watched the progression of events. For their support of the Persians, the islanders were later punished by the Athenian war leader Themistocles, who exacted a heavy fine.
Under the Delian League, the Athenian-dominated naval confederacy, Paros paid the highest tribute of the island members: 30 talents annually, according to the estimate of Olympiodorus. This implies that Paros was one of the wealthiest islands in the Aegean. Little is known about the constitution of Paros, but inscriptions seem to show that it was modeled on the Athenian democracy, with a boule at the head of affairs. In 410 BC, Athenian general Theramenes discovered that Paros was governed by an oligarchy; he deposed the oligarchy and restored the democracy. Paros was included in the second Athenian confederacy. In, along with Chios, it severed its connection with Athens.
From the inscription of Adule, it is understood that the Cyclades, which are presumed to include Paros, were subjected to the Ptolemies, the Hellenistic dynasty that ruled Egypt. Paros then became part of the Roman Empire and later of the Byzantine Empire, its Greek-speaking successor state.

Crusades

In 1204, the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade seized Constantinople and overthrew the Byzantine Empire. Although a residual Byzantine state known as the Empire of Nicaea survived the Crusader onslaught and eventually recovered Constantinople, many of the original Byzantine territories, including Paros, were lost permanently to the crusading powers. Paros became subject to the Duchy of the Archipelago, a fiefdom made up of various Aegean islands ruled by a Venetian duke as nominal vassal of a succession of crusader states. In practice, however, the duchy was always a client state of the Republic of Venice.

Ottoman era and independence

In 1537, Paros was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and remained under the Ottoman Empire until the Greek War of Independence. The Ottoman conquest of Paros resulted in atrocities committed against the public: as happened to the population in other islands during the Ottoman conquest of the Aegean islands, old men were killed; young men were made galley slaves; little boys were made janissaries; and the women were ordered to dance on the shore so that the conquerors could choose the most attractive for the lieutenants, enslaving around 6000 of the inhabitants of Paros for slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
During the Russo-Turkish War in 1770–1775 Naoussa Bay was the home base for the Russian Archipelago Squadron of Count Alexey Orlov. Under the Treaty of Constantinople, Paros became part of the newly independent Kingdom of Greece, the first time the Parians had been ruled by fellow Greeks for over six centuries. At this time, Paros became the home of a heroine of the nationalist movement, Manto Mavrogenous, who had both financed and fought in the war for independence. Her house, near Ekatontapiliani church, is today a historical monument.

WWII and Nazi Occupation

During the WWII Axis occupation of Greece, Paros was originally occupied by the Italians until 1943. The Nazis then took over the island in 1944 and imposed brutal rule from the beginning.
In 1944, during the German occupation of Paros, the island's strategic importance led to the forced construction of an airfield near the village of Marpissa. The project amassed over 400 forced Greek workers at one point. Local resistance, aided by the Allies, sought to sabotage the project, with Nikolas Stellas, a 23-year-old partisan, emerging as a key figure. Captured by the Germans, Stellas refused to provide any names or information and was therefore publicly hanged, becoming a symbol of resistance. In retaliation, 125 Parians were condemned to execution. However, Major Georg Graf von Merenberg, the German commander, was persuaded by Abbot Philotheos Zervakos to spare them, influenced by Stellas' sacrifice and the abbot's appeal to his humanity.
British commandos and local partisans conducted a successful operation that led to the attack on German forces stationed there. The operation included the sabotage of German communication lines and the abduction of a key German officer. This resistance effort was part of a broader Allied strategy in the Aegean during World War II, contributing to the disruption of German military operations in the region. The airfield constructed by the Germans in Marpissa was later bombed by the British. There are no remains of it today.

21st century

On 26 September 2000 the ferry MS Express Samina collided with the Portes islets off the bay of Parikia, killing 82 of those on board.
Starting in the summer of 2023, the island saw protests from locals on many beaches due to government failure to stop beach-side businesses from placing more umbrellas than permitted. The protests saw some success, with the Greek government toughening inspections and implementing fines for businesses who do not abide by the rules.

Parikia

The capital, Parikia, situated on a bay on the north-west side of the island, occupies the site of the ancient capital Paros. Parikía harbour is a major hub for Aegean islands ferries and catamarans, with several sailings each day for Piraeus, the port of Athens, Heraklion, the capital of Crete, and other islands such as Naxos, Ios, Mykonos, and Santorini.
In Parikia town, houses are built and decorated in the traditional Cycladic style, with flat roofs, whitewashed walls and blue-painted doors and window frames and shutters. Shadowed by luxuriant vines, and surrounded by gardens of oranges and pomegranates, the houses give the town a picturesque aspect. Above the central stretch of the seafront road, are the remains of a medieval castle, built almost entirely of the marble remains of an ancient temple dedicated to Apollo. Similar traces of antiquity, in the shape of bas-reliefs, inscriptions, columns, and so on, are numerous. On a hillside in the southern outskirts of Parikia on the left of the Parikia – Alyki road are the remains of a temple dedicated to Asclepius. In addition, close to the modern harbour, the remains of an ancient cemetery are visible, having been discovered recently during non-archaeological excavations.
Back from the port, around 400 m left of Parikia's main square, is the town's principal church, the Panagia Ekatontapiliani, literally meaning "church of the hundred doors". Its oldest features almost certainly predate the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire in 391. It is said to have been founded by the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, Saint Helen, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There are two adjoining chapels, one of very early form, and also a baptistery with a cruciform font.
The Archaeological Museum of Paros is located in Parikia town,a small but interesting museum housing some of the many finds from sites in Paros. The best pieces, however, are in the Athens National Archaeological Museum. The Paros museum contains a fragment of the Parian Chronicle, a remarkable chronology of ancient Greece. Inscribed in marble, its entries give time elapsed between key events from the most distant past down to 264 BC.