When in 1997 the archaeologist Yannos Kouragios started the excavation at Despotiko, after Dolly Goulandris pointed out that there was a goat pen built of ancient material on the island, he certainly did not imagine that this site was destined to become one of the ten most important archaeological discoveries of 2011. This year, the excavation on the small island of Despotiko, west of Antiparos, turns 25 years old and perhaps next year it will officially open as an organised archaeological site.
I was lucky enough to visit and guide Despotiko in 2004 when the excavation was in its infancy and nothing foreshadowed the impressive sanctuary that today’s visitor sees.

When in 1997 the archaeologist Yannos Kouragios started the excavation at Despotiko, after Dolly Goulandris pointed out that there was a goat pen built of ancient material on the island, he certainly did not imagine that this site was destined to become one of the ten most important archaeological discoveries of 2011. This year, the excavation on the small island of Despotiko, west of Antiparos, turns 25 years old and perhaps next year it will officially open as an organised archaeological site.
I was lucky enough to visit and guide Despotiko in 2004 when the excavation was in its infancy and nothing foreshadowed the impressive sanctuary that today’s visitor sees.
Despotiko, the small island west of Antiparos, opposite the chapel of St. George, has been living a new period in its history for the last 20 years. Unfamous and completely unknown to those not living in the wider Paros area until a few years ago, it is now famous and popular thanks to the excavations carried out by the archaeologist of EFA Cyclades, Yiannos Kouragios, with a lot of courage!
I can boast that I know Despotiko since its birth and that I am probably the first guide to set foot there. It was October 2004 and after a summer of unemployment due to the Olympic Games, I received a call from a tourist agency I was working with to guide a group of 8 people through Despotiko. And what a group! They included the director of the Baltimore Museum, curators from other museums and art historians. They had heard about the excavation from the wife of our ambassador in Washington who had told them that since they were coming to Greece, they absolutely had to visit the site.
When I was assigned the tour, I was very embarrassed. I had never been to Despotiko, I had read something about the excavations of Tsountas and Zafeiropoulos about a proto-cycladic cemetery, I had seen some findings in the Archaeological Museum of Paros, but this was a new excavation on the eastern side of the island completely unrelated to what had been published up to that time. I soon discovered that there was no bibliography either. So I had to not only tour prima vista but also find information. A good friend living in Paros at the time, to whom I turned for help, sent me a short article by Kourayos in the local press about the Daedalian clay figurine he had found, Pippina, as it is affectionately known.
With this article and my notes from the university on the phases of an excavation, I tried to build a narrative and give a decent tour to my discerning audience.
So we set off on a bright October morning on a boat from Punta on Paros to Despotiko. Arriving at Agios Georgios in Antiparos, we transferred to a smaller boat that unloaded us at the Despotiko pier and its captain, George Marianos, gave me a VHF to alert him to come and pick us up when the tour was over. “Pull ahead and you’ll find it,” he told me. The strangers looked at me in awe, they knew we were going to an island to see a new excavation but the setting was probably beyond their imagination – and mine I must say! We started to climb up the soft slope. We were the only people there but not the only living creatures. Hundreds of white and parched ash and brown goats were wandering around us in a puzzled manner and one or two dogs were barking at us in disbelief, thankfully from a distance.
We quickly arrived at the excavation site. I immediately recognized the five rooms I had read about-two of the temple and three of the side ritual restaurant-excavated and visible at the base of the walls. I said what I had prepared to say, I also spoke about Apollo, we toured the site, discussed, developed our speculations and theories, admired the scenery, enjoyed the silence and the awesome privilege of being alone on an island, witnessing an archaeological site in the making, and walked down to the pier. The boat came along, and took us to our boat, where a grilled octopus and a bottle of ouzo awaited us. The air was clear as it is only in October, the sun bright but lukewarm, the sea oil, the tour over…I no longer knew if our boat was going back to Punta or if we were sailing to Paradise.
Since then my relationship with Despotiko has come a long way. I first met the excavator who generously offered me his knowledge and all the new information that comes up every year. I interviewed him and wrote about the excavation and restoration for Parola, the free press of Paros. I even organized a visit for guides from all over Greece in 2012, where Yiannos Kouragios presented the monument in detail.
Now, I go there many times every summer, sometimes alone and sometimes with colleagues, to meet Kourayo and let us know what he finds, and I have shown dozens of people, both well-known and unknown, and of course all the friends who come to see me as I now live in Paros.
I have come to love this place and I like to imagine the sailors who in ancient times would arrive here from various ports of the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, bringing their offerings and animals to be sacrificed to the god of light, Apollo, and their beloved Hestia, to take their baths and half-lying on their recliners in the restaurant by the temple, chewing the tender cuts, drinking the sweet wine, singing the songs of their homeland and throwing a dance or two. A little respite from the trials and tribulations of the sea at the sanctuary of the god born nearby, in the centre of the Aegean, in neighbouring Delos.
Now Despotiko has become bustling and cosmopolitan. People from all over the world visit it by any means but mainly by the now legendary “Sargos”, the boat of Giorgos Mariano, the boatman of Despotiko. The low walls that I saw when I first went there have been raised, as much material as was found has been put in place and enough new material has been added so that the last ancient stone can fit into the restored sanctuary, the result of cooperation between archaeologists, architects, conservators, archaeology students, workers and marble workers. Now when you arrive, there is no chance of getting lost. A corridor leads you from the pier straight into the sanctuary, in front of the altar, the temple, the ceremonial restaurant. To the left and right other buildings loom up, tanks, baths, auxiliary rooms. An impressive complex that, soon, I hope, will become an organized archaeological site. But forever etched in my mind is that first image where in the silence, with the goats around, I was anxiously curious about the walls and trying to rise to the occasion