In the bright sunlit Aegean scene that has prevailed in the post-war years as a tourist can of export and on-site consumption, one has to struggle a lot to discover the real moments, backstage, where the real protagonists are preparing to go on stage without make-up.

We are talking about the most prominent and therefore distorted image of the real Greece: The Aegean islands. Its projection is often so flattening and brutal that it is crushed under a superficial ‘aesthetic uniformity’.

A windmill, white settlements “like doves”, purple bougainvillea, beaches whose waters shine like handmade glass, octopus dehydrating in the sun and churches – temples “in the shape of the sky”!

Close to them, the manhood wearing an open shirt and holding a rosary, a group of extras jumping around, giggling with their young and robust bodies, trying to “satiate our senses”, as the world-wide spot of our tourism says.

The world of the Aegean human society, divided on the mountain tops protruding from the sea, which are our islands, has been sailing for years now, building a civilization with a strong element of continuity. Enveloped in myths, the Aegean has been able to preserve many elements of its physiognomy, but also to survive by selling its ‘possessions’ (land and water), not always without a heavy price.

These thoughts, inevitable almost every time one heads to the Aegean, accompanied me on my trip to Milos.

I had seen it before from above, with dozens of dug plagues on its land, left bare and dusty after the exploitation of its mineral wealth and with the precious green of the island destroyed and plundered.

Its maritime approach saves you from such disturbing images.

Its rapid tourist development has taken place in the last 10 – 15 years and it aspires to occupy the 3rd^th place after the noisy Mykonos and the multinational Santorini. A number of islands in the Aegean have been late to parade on the mass tourism scene for different reasons each: Tinos was saved thanks to Megalochari, for which caravans of devotees arrive in the country, leaving its 40 villages inaccessible. In Leros, the psychiatric hospital that operated until the 1980s, and the memory of the communist concentration camp, repelled visitors.

And Milos, with the large number of mines on its territory, was identified with an “industrial” polluting place.

Located in the west of the volcanic arc of the southern Aegean, Milos, together with Santorini, presents perhaps the most interesting volcanic geology.

At the bottom of its horseshoe shape hides one of the safest harbours in the Aegean and in the vast shady (from the dense salt water) beach of Adamas, Papikinou, the waters are permanently uncharted. Even when the north wind blows, by the time it crosses the bay to the shore, it is cold.

Early in the summer, in June, before the waves of tourists upset the island, Milos gives you a sense of gentleness and effortlessly you feel that you would like to stay here, in a familiar place with a heavy history.

Milos: A place with many interpretations and a glorious past

The hero named Milos once started from Delos and reached Cyprus. There, he became associated with the family of King Kinira, and a deep love connected him with his son Adonis. He married Pelias, a relative of the royal family. But when Adonis died, Milos could not bear his loss and hung himself from a tree (which was an apple tree). Not being able to bear the death of Milos, Pelias also dies. The son of the couple, who was also called Milos, grew up in the sanctuary of Aphrodite and the goddess transformed his father Milos into the fruit of the apple and Pelias into a dove. She sent his son Milos to an island in the Aegean Sea where he founded a city that was named after him (Milos).

Milos the Younger taught here the art of shearing sheep and the manufacture of woollen clothes.

The vowel ‘ή’ of the word ‘Μήλος’ (Milos) in the Doric dialect is an ‘a’. So Malon is Milon and means both the fruit and the sheep (the Malon), an animal from which we get its wool to make clothes.

From the ancient adjective mallys comes the newer woollen. An interpretation that connects the fruit apple with the sheep (the Malon), attributes the verbal similarity to the fact that those early apples were probably covered on their skin by some fluff (as peaches are today), or by the fluff of the leaves of the tree.

It is very interesting that the two-sign meaning of the word “Milon”, the Milesians imprinted it on their coins, even before the Persian wars, where one side depicted the fruit and the other the head of a ram, both considered as “lalounta symbols”.

Another myth says that Milos was the son of Scamander and was claimed as a priest by Hera, Aphrodite and Athena. This conflict as we know ended with Paris giving the apple to Aphrodite as a reward for her beauty.

Aristides Grammatikos tells us that Milos was called Vyvlis or Byblis and was a colony of Byblos of the Phoenicians* (*this is the ancient city in present-day Lebanon that was bombed in the summer of 2006 by the Israelis).

Aristotle names the island with the name of the old medieval capital: Zephyria. The poet Kallimachos names it Mimallida after the homonymous nymph who was worshipped on the island.

Heraclitus the Grammatician calls it Akiton. And the names are endless: Memblis, Syriphis, Byalos and also Vilos.

The Turks called Milos Dirkin – αντασι i.e. the island of millstones, because the quarries produced very good millstones.

Just a later interpretation of the name attributes it to the large production of millstone that existed already from antiquity. But apart from the sound similarity of the word, the spelling difference (Mylos – Milos) makes this interpretation unfortunate and unconvincing.

The small distance of the island from the western Peloponnese made it a colony of the Lacedaemonians. Thus, it also brought it into opposition with the powerful Athens. And it is known the emblematic timelessness, until our days that acquired the destruction of Milos by the ruling Athenians.

Of great importance is the city of Phylakopi in the northeast, contemporary with Minoa on Amorgos and the cape of Thera, there in 2000 BC.

In the years that followed, the island was visited by Franks, Venetians, but not by Turks, and for many centuries it was a base for pirate raids with the involvement of the inhabitants themselves.

The Wires: The peculiar fishing settlements in Milos

Nowhere else on any other island (perhaps only on Santorini with its subsoil), the rocks and the subsoil have not shaped and determined, even the history, as much as on the impressive island of Milos.

The pre-Christian period places the island, along with Rome and Palestine, among the places where catacombs were built. Their birth was facilitated by the loose and friable soil in the area of Tripiti. The same soft soils that accommodated the “fallen asleep in Christ” offered to house and protect the tools of work of the fishermen inhabitants of Klima. So the houses here, the “theodic” as Aris Konstantinidis would say, are two-storey houses, with the upper floor for the owner-fisherman and the lower floor for the …boat!

This is how the fishing village of Klima was born. It is the town built by the Milioi after the decline of Phylakopi, when they were forced by the pirates to take refuge in the interior of the bay. Here is the first port of the island. The town has a dock and is the exit to the sea of the ancient city on the hill. On the narrow sandy beach there is still an amorphous part of the old (perhaps Roman) dock.

Clemma is the quintessence of the maritime state. The houses today are lined up in a row (since Klematovouni rises behind) with Tripiti and Triovasalos, and are washed by the waves of the bay, especially when the wind blows from the west.

Their owners, fishermen, lived for many years isolated from the rest of the island, since the absence of a carriage road to the interior (except for the path to Tripiti) forced them to communicate by sea, mainly with Adamas.

Despite its being very well photographed, Klima reminds one of those pre-war maritime settlements of the Mediterranean, with the strict morality of the families, which was also the result of the hard working conditions.

As in Lucine the Viscountess‘s wonderful black and white film “La terra trema = the earth trembles” in Acci Trezza of Catania in Sicily.

Today, despite the interest of some people to buy a house there and few “rooms to let”, its inhabitants still move lazily, wrapped in the salty microcosm, conversing with their boats that park in the living room or the dining room in a harmony and coexistence of people and things. This residential peculiarity is also found in three other settlements: Mandrakia, Fourcovouni and, above all, Fyropotamos. But also in the settlement of Goupa, in neighbouring Kimolos.

In the past, we used to encounter this phenomenon in isolated cases on other islands, as up to 10 years ago in Karavostasi in Folegandros with the same name: Syrtmata. Because they used thick wires to drag the floats through the covered area. Today the “Wires” became in Karavostasi… a bar!

The region of Halaka: eerie landscapes, lonely seas.

What’s really strange about this island. With an area of 151 square kilometres, only a small part of it is inhabited, the north-eastern part of the right side of its horseshoe shape. All the historical settlements are concentrated there with their modern continuity. The settlements of Paliochori, Ag. Kyriaki and Provatas in the western south are newer formations. Thus a huge part of the island where the high peak of Prof. Ilias, is still in the serenity of its peculiar and diverse nature.

The trails in Halaka, an area that has already been declared a protected area by Natura 2000, are a unique experience.

From the top of the mountain (748 m.) gorges descend, some calm and others wild, such as that of Kakopotamos, forested with schoina, wild cypress, low-branched kumarias, hard maples and holly.

The “entrance” in a way to the area of Halaka, starts just before Achivadolimni.

A road on the left will take us to the south of the west side and another on the right will take us to the wild kingdom of the mountainous Halaka. The last inhabited place here is the beautiful church of Agia Marina. From here we can follow the coastal road, inland from the bay, and after 6 – 7 km we can relax at Empourio, a place with a pre-war nostalgic atmosphere. Back then, during holidays the whole family swam, ate well and slept at noon. During the breaks the women would wash their winter clothes and the children would play unrestrained games using earth, water, wooden boats and improvised constructions as materials. Now here the old windmill, standing almost in the sea without its ethereal wings, looks forgotten and alien. But the little tavern floating on the wave gathers some of those old holidaymakers, the rivals of the noisy beaches with their deckchairs and the smells of fruity sunscreen.

So after this short break in Empurio, we head to the middle of the west side, looking for a group of beaches outside the tourist market. The many winding roads literally belt the mountain of Prof. Ilia. The mining activity on the island has created a vast network of roads that plow rampantly through the place from end to end.

The area surprises with its rich – for a Cycladic island – vegetation. Except for Andros, nowhere else in the Cyclades will you find such a density of trees and bushes, which form the unity of the forest, even from time to time.

Dry bog beds are covered by juniper (juniperus exceisa), some of which reach up to 30 m. They follow the downhill of the bog and somewhere there 100 – 200 m before the wave they stop to give their place to the sandy beach and bushy cedars.

The dirt road that we took after about 10 kilometers from Ag. Marina, through fields and clumps of forest vegetation, stops in front of the first beach from Triades, three consecutive beaches that are actually…5!

The first two, each 500 m. long, and another 500 m. deep, disappearing into bushy and woody vegetation, gleam in their pale white sandy beach, separated by a rocky neck.

And after the end of the second beach, sinking through the dunes that make walking difficult, we find ourselves in the third, 200 m long, surrounded by white rocks that reflect the midday sun and blind you.

August is the month of August and there are very few visitors to the Triades, lovers of nudism and total contact with nature.

Two other smaller beaches further south (on our left) with Ammoudaraki are a continuation of the Triades. This is where the scouts of indestructible Milos come, expressing their admiration for this part of the island that still remains impregnable.

Returning to Adamas, at the height of Achivadolimni we take the road to the right to the south side of Halakas.

Here the beaches are few, but between Panagia tou Kipou and the distant settlement of Psathadika we find on our right a strange area, where huge rocks, which at some point in the distant geological past, were thrown in every direction, create a valley that reminds us of Volakas of Tinos, but with more wildness of nature. And among them are huge prickly pear, carob, locust, schosina and cedar trees. The road stops after a while. Impassable rocks hide the Kleftiko region behind them.

The circumnavigation of Milos: A journey through the journey

The Tour of Milos is an exercise in geological observation of the island that emerged and formed 500 thousand years ago into its current shape.

At 125 km. in circumference, one can observe the stages of its age and the varied coastal formations.

From Adamas we head west towards the exit of the bay. At the “ridge”, the twin islands of Akradies with the remains of a monastery and an ancient settlement. On our left the beaches of Ag. Dimitrios. We arrive at Vani, a cape with decommissioned barite and manganese mining facilities since 1928. In the distance, to the north, the dark cone of Antimilos with a height of 671 m, a place inhospitable and uninhabitable for humans.

An imposing, copper-red landscape. Turning to the west side, we’ll start counting beaches. First and best is Agathia, accessible by land. And in a moment, our beloved Triads and Ammoudaraki.

A little further down the 4 beaches next to the Monastery of St. John of Siderianos and immediately after the mysterious big cave of Sykia with the sunken “roof” and the small inner sandy beach.

Somewhere here AGET – HERAKLIS mined in a dusty dust, the pozzolan, a component of the cement that will be sent all over Greece to cement our already saturated cities, often inappropriately and suffocatingly.

Turning to the south side we enter the complex seascape of Kleftiko: Caves, pebble beaches, rocky fortresses that rise out of the water. A multi-photographed landscape, famous throughout the Mediterranean.

The next beaches that follow, Gerontas and Psathiou, are poor, until we enter the eastern part of the lower side. You have five beaches. The area is pulsating with internal rearrangements, often altering the beaches of the south, as in Fyriplaka, which sometimes grows and sometimes the precipitation narrows it.

Tsigrado, an artificial beach, made from the unused material of perlite thrown from the adjacent mining plant on the cliff that has been transformed into a “sandy” beach. The descent and ascent to it is an adventurous experience.

And oh my goodness, turning a small curve in front of us, the inaccessible beach of Kalamos! A magnificent and strange beach, perhaps the most beautiful of Milos. Behind and above the grey and white sandy beach, rocks rise up through which rivers of sand “flow”, forming the sandy beach. The glassy clarity of its waters is dreamlike.

Immediately after the busy Agia Kiriaki and behind a rock the 3 deserted beaches of Psarovolada. Here, on land, the earth is lost, and through the openings vapours blur the day. The smell of the gods reaches from the air to the sea. In Paliochori, which follows the huge beach, there is always a place even for lonely swimmers, in the last part of the beach.

We take the turn and ascend the eastern part of Milos. Spathi beach, Fyrligou beach and 5-6 more until we reach the “dead” today and rusty Thiorites. On their wonderful beach with the small stone bridge where water flows through whenever the torrent fills up, some people set up a tent in search of absolute solitude.

Going upwards we pass Agali, Kolymbisonas, Three Wells, Kastana and other smaller, unnamed sandy islets. After a short stop for lunch at the children’s harbour of Kimolos, Psathi, we return to the Milos route.

In the huge sandy bay of Voudia, the giant facilities of Varytini shade the hills with thyme and koniza. Passing outside Pollonia, we find that a quiet little harbour – passage to Kimolos, has been shaped in recent years, fortunately tastefully and humanely.

We are already sailing on the north side and the view of the Glaronesia within a breath’s distance stuns us, just as the rocks that the last great volcanic activity threw up froze, and the lava emerged from the sea, shattered into millions of prisms and rods. This is the image that the inhabitants of ancient Phylakopi, which is opposite us, saw. Five – six all and all Glaronisia with the all-black volume of Kalogeros as the protagonist. On the coast is the labyrinthine cave of Papafragas, a peculiar twin fjord with a miniature sandy beach at the head of one bay.

Plathaina and Kafto are the next beaches until the Sarakiniko, made of kishere and concrete, unfolds. A cluster of white masses of anisomotes, around a few meters long beach – entrance to the sea. Its prominent position does not in any way diminish its dazzling physiognomy.

We now walk around the western end of the eastern part of Milos. This is where all the inhabitants are concentrated with their settlements. The fishing villages Mandrakia and Fyropotamos. The peninsula of the extinct volcano of Trachila with scattered hugs – sandy beaches. Entering the tranquility of the bay you feel that the journey has not lasted a few hours but many centuries or millions of years. All that it took to give birth to this island that dived and emerged in the marine universe that surrounded it many times until it took on its present geological identity. Fourkovouni, the historic Klima and Schinopi are the last settlements after about 60 small and large beaches that greet us a few meters before our return to the Adamas level.

Adamas, Plaka and the other settlements

In the 151 sq.km area of Milos, the Milesians built their villages in a part that does not exceed 21 sq.km, in the same soil where their ancestors built their own cities, dug the catacombs, and designed their theatre and Acropolis. A settlement tradition unbroken for 4000 years.

The port of Adamas grew the town and new houses spread out on its former plain, with the baxedes and the pre-war manganese houses. Only the reeds remain to remind us of the wet ground.

The old nucleus, however, with the church of Panagia Portiani in the centre, stands on the low hill in an isosceles triangle with the church’s bell tower at the top.

Today the capital, Plaka, renovated, mainly thanks to the purchase of houses by locals and foreigners, looks renewed and on summer evenings it shines cheerfully on the plateau above the ancient Milos, still maintaining its freshness.

As for the other villages, Tripiti, Triovasalos, and beyond Triovasalos with Plakes, the boundaries have been lost and the villages have been joined together with much reconstruction, not always with the required aesthetics.

Epilogue

Milos is not just another Cycladic island. Anyone who studies it, walks and feels it, avoiding the aesthetic traps of its dazzling nature, will realize its uniqueness. Today it may not be the great centre of the pirates who operated in its ports in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, but it is the largest centre for the production and processing of perlite and concrete in the EU.

One understands that its course in a world where economic laws prevail will not be easy. The conflict between unbridled economic growth and the preservation of an intact and natural environment is almost inevitable. The Joint Ministerial Decision (CMD) No. 49567 of 22/12/2006 attempts to protect the flora and fauna of the island and limit the construction of buildings (mainly hotels), while the installation of new mining activities is allowed. The gold deposits probably hidden in the bowels of Halaka will lead the island into tensions. Already the residents and their associations have appealed to the Council of Ministers for the revocation of the CBA.

The fragile image of the Aegean is being shaken from many sides. The compulsory whitewashing of settlements (imposed by the Metaxas dictatorship) may be lifted and colours may freely return to the island states, while dry stone walls, without coating, may replace the built modern fences, but the “maritime state”, or the “Scattered City of the Aegean”, as the historian Spyros Asdrachas describes and characterizes the cultural and social unity of the islands, is far from being realized.

In the new image of Milos, which will be created in the future by its inhabitants, I hope to use the “Milia Earth” of Theophrastus, as he describes it in his mineralogical book “On stones”. This soil was mixed with paint by the ancient painters to prolong the vitality of the painting. In this painting, human activities should rightly coexist on an equal footing with the uninterrupted functioning of nature and its creatures. The gentle use of geothermal and thermal springs, with the standard cultivation of old varieties of fruits and vegetables, favoured by the island’s warm climate.

Otherwise, any unilateral economic outlook will lead either to a bustling tourist village or to a heavily industrialized region, repulsive to local and foreign visitors.

And until then the 60 beaches of the island must remain clean and unspoilt. The antiquities and the unique catacombs should shine internationally and the ecclesiastical monuments should strengthen the pilgrimage tourism. And at the same time to provide a place for the island’s rare viper, the endangered sea lily and the neglected wild goats of Antimilos.

Thanks to:

• the tourist office of Mrs. Athena Soulis in Adamas for the facilities and information provided to us.
• the family of George, Antonio and Stelios Aivaliotis, in Adamas, for the hospitality they offered us.
• the taverns “Alefromylos” and “Spitiko”, in Adamas, for the wonderful dishes we tasted.

Bibliography

• Manolis Glezos: The consciousness of the Stone Earth.
• Belivanakis: The history of Milos, Athens 2001
• Margarita Vrettou – Souli: The Millstone
• The Aegean, a scattered city: 10^th Venice Architecture Biennale International Exhibition, ed. Ministry of Culture 2006
• Fotis Kontoglou: Taxidia, Athens 1928
• The island of Milos, seven days, Kathimerini newspaper 1995
• Milos: Storm for cementing, newspaper “NEA”, 17 -18/3/2007