CYCLADES SIGHTSEEING - DELOS

Delos is located at the centre of the Cyclades, the half-way point on the journey between mainland Greece and Ionia, the islands of Chios, Samos and Rhodes to the east, and Crete to the south.

It became a trading center early on and developed steadily into one of the most important in the eastern Mediterranean.

To a large extent Delos owed its development to the fact that it was the birthplace of Apollo, which made it a holy place. Despite its diminutive size, Delos is one of the most important archaeological sites in Greece, and certainly the most important in the Cyclades.

The earliest traces of settlement on Delos reach back to the third millennium B.C., but the sacred isle first flourished in the second half of the second millenium B.C, the so-called Mycenaean period.

On the lower levels of the western slopes of the Mount Cynthus, East of the main Apollo sanctuary, were erected the temples of the foreign gods introduced to Delos by the cosmopolitan inhabitants who flooded the island in the hellenistic period.

These temples are for the most part preserved on the lower parts of the buildings, and only the temple of Isis is in part restored. On this flat island in the middle of the Aegean Sea the sun dazzles. Many caiques arrive at Delos every day bringing visitors from Myconos, who leave the island at sunset as it is forbidden to remain on the island overnight.

In the neighbourhood of Limni (lake), among the temples, there is one of the most beautiful monuments, namely the Lions Road with nine marble lions, an offering of the Naxians in the 7th C. Unfortunately only five of them have been saved.

Finally in the suburb of the Theatre, we can see ruins from houses, beautifully decorated with fine mosaics.

SIFNOS, ANDROS, AMORGOS, DELOS, IOS, KEA, KYTHNOS, MILOS, MYKONOS, NAXOS, PAROS, ANTIPAROS, SANTORINI, SERIFOS, SIKINOS, SYROS, TINOS, FOLEGANDROS