DELOS: A delightful day trip
Delos, a 30-minute ferry ride from Mykonos, is today an uninhabited Aegean island but 2,500 years ago it was a sacred spot, drawing pilgrims from across the Mediterranean. According to myth, the god Apollo was born there, making it one of the most important shrines of the Greek world.
At its peak, it was a thriving religious and commercial centre with a population of more than 10,000. The ancient Greeks competed to offer Apollo bigger and better gifts. The inhabitants of Naxos — to the south — gave it one of the greatest statues of antiquity: a figure of
Apollo, four times life-size, along with a magnificent sentinel row of huge, snarling lions.
But in the later
Roman period, it was repeatedly sacked by pirates and enemy armies. Slowly, the inhabitants disappeared. The result was that no newer buildings were put on top of the old ones, as happened in more successful cities such as Athens. Though the neighbouring islands used it as a quarry for a couple of millennia — in the old town of Mykonos, for example, you’ll find classical pillars and lintels repurposed as parts of houses or churches — much of it remains.
Today it is a Greek Pompeii, its Sacred Precinct a ruined city filled with temples, public squares, private houses and winding streets, but hundreds of years older than the Roman version. The remnants of the Apollo statue — a gigantic torso and, a few metres away, his thighs and waist — more than a century older than the Parthenon, can be found here lying among the tumbled stones. The snarling lions were whittled down from 16 to five (the Venetians stole one, which is now outside the gate of the Arsenale).
The original survivors are in the museum on Delos, but in situ have been replaced by perfect facsimiles — the most-photographed part of the site. The museum, meanwhile, is a spacious, cool, blue-walled sanctuary from the heat, full of battered but still beautiful sculptures.
You can only get to Delos on a day trip by ferry from another island. Most commonly the point of departure is Mykonos, but there are also day trips from the islands of Naxos and Paros. There is no accommodation on the island, whose only inhabitants are the caretakers and archaeologists.