Paros
Paros is the practical centre of the Cyclades, and the question every guest asks is the same: Parikia or Naoussa. The honest answer is Naoussa for the food and the harbour evenings, Parikia for the ferries, the church, and a quieter base. If you have four nights, split them.
The stone underfoot is the reason any of this exists. Parian marble, prized since antiquity for its translucence, was quarried in the hills above the village of Marathi and shipped across the ancient Mediterranean. The mines, now silent, can still be visited; the Hermes of Praxiteles in the Olympia museum was carved from this stone, as was much of the finest sculpture of the classical period.
In the heart of Parikia stands the Panagia Ekatontapiliani, the Church of One Hundred Doors, attributed to the mother of Constantine the Great and one of the few surviving fourth-century Byzantine churches in Greece. Local tradition holds that ninety-nine of its doors have been counted; the hundredth, it is said, will reveal itself only when Constantinople returns to Greek hands.
Naoussa has changed in the last decade. Where the harbour once held only fishermen mending nets, it now holds restaurants of genuine ambition alongside the old kafenia. The Venetian fortress ruins at the harbour entrance still get partly submerged at high tide, which we find charming. Inland, the marble-paved village of Lefkes is the place to escape the August coastal heat for a long lunch.
House Notes
Arrival
Paros has its own airport (PAS), with daily flights from Athens and seasonal European charters. Helicopter from Athens runs about 45 minutes. Yacht arrivals dock at Parikia (the working ferry port) or anchor in Naoussa Bay; the Antiparos crossing is a 10-minute car ferry from Pounta on the southern tip.
The address
Cosme, the 40-suite Luxury Collection resort on Naoussa Bay by Interior Design Laboratorium — the half-moon pool mirroring the bay, chef Yiannis Kioroglou's Parostia and Volta kitchens on the beach. Parīlio, the 46-suite house set inland in a tranquil valley on the northeastern coast, in colour-washed concrete and local marble.
The kitchens
Mario, now in Parikia after seventeen years on the Naoussa harbour, for the elevated kitchen Paros's restaurants are measured against. Siparos at Xifara, three kilometres east of Naoussa, for the tamarisk garden and the long sunset dinner. Sigi Ikhthyos on the Naoussa harbour square for the fish grilled in the evening by Giannis Zoumis himself.
The marble quarries at Marathi
Two underground galleries — the Quarry of the Nymphs and the Quarry of Pan — opened in the 7th century BC and worked into late antiquity. Lychnite, the snow-white statuary marble unique in its translucence, came from these galleries; the Hermes of Praxiteles, the Aphrodite of Milos, and the Victory of Samothrace were carved from it. Visits arranged through Friends of Paros.
The Aegean Center for the Fine Arts
A 1966 art school in a restored neoclassical building in the old town of Parikia — the only school of its kind in the Cyclades. Two semester-long programmes per year, max 24 students; summer 15-day workshops in painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and classical singing.
The beaches
Kolymbithres, west of Naoussa, for the granite formations that form natural pools; Monastiri, in the same bay, calm and shallow; Santa Maria for the snorkelling on the eastern coast; Faragas, on the south coast in a sheltered bay, for the windy day. Water taxis from Naoussa’s old port reach Kolymbithres, Monastiri, and Laggeri.
Antiparos, the day trip
The 10-minute car ferry from Pounta to Antiparos runs through the day. The Antiparos cave on the centre hill descends nearly 100 metres into stalactite chambers, with Greek inscriptions on its walls from the 4th century BC. The Marquis de Nointel celebrated Christmas Mass inside it in 1673. A guided visit takes about an hour.
Ekatontapyliani
Behind the legend of the hundred doors stands the architecture: a three-aisled cruciform basilica raised over an ancient gymnasium, reworked under Justinian, with parts of the marble iconostasis and the pulpit preserved from the Early-Christian period. The Baptistery of the 4th century, beside the main church, is among the best-kept in the Orthodox East — a cruciform font cut whole into the marble. The Byzantine Museum in the complex holds the icons and woodcarvings.
The Byzantine Road
A thousand-year-old marble-paved track runs the hour from Lefkes, the mountain village that was the first capital of Paros, down to Prodromos through olive groves and vineyards thick with thyme and oregano. Stretches keep their original marble paving intact; others scatter it among the dirt. Prodromos closes its lanes to cars under a domed arch joining two small churches, and the four beaches of Molos, Kalogeros, Tsoukalia and Drios lie below.
Moraitis at Naoussa
The estate at Aghioi Anargyroi by the beach, founded by Manolis Moraitis in 1910, now in its third generation across 18,000 square metres of organic vineyard. The varieties are Cycladic-indigenous: Monemvasia, Mandilaria, Aidani Black, Vaftra, Karampraimi — with Paros named in research as the ark that preserved Monemvasia from Venetian rule onward.