axos is and always has been a crossroad, where archaeologists, historians, scholars of all kinds, artists and ordinary people with interests in history, archaeology and folklore can meet, drawn by the importance of the culture which has flourished on the island down the centuries. Its size, its central position in the Aegean, the fertility of its soil and the prosperity that those factors created helped to assure Naxos of self sufficiency down the ages.

n mythology, Naxos is the island of Bacchus and Ariadne. Bacchus (or Dionysus), the god of wine, was living here when Theseus, returning from Crete, abandoned Ariadne, the daughter of cretean King Minos, who had helped him to slay the Minotaur, on the island. But Ariadne finally found consolation in the arms of Bacchus and became his wife.
Their marriage, her death and the rebirth which that death foreshadows were in antiquity the focus of wild celebrations on Naxos, where this cult, focusing on the ripening, death and regenaration of nature was most highly developed.

axos was inhabited before 2000 BC. However, the golden age of the island was the 7th and 6th centuries BC. At that period Naxos was master of virtually all the Cyclades and developed its trade and its art, particularly sculpture. Examples of its art can be encountered in many parts of Greece, as the Delphi with the marble sphinx of the Naxians and on Delos with the famous Lions and the House and Stoa of the Naxians. In 490 BC, Naxos was laid waste by the multitudes of the Persian army, which was then beginning its campaign against Greece.

n 479 BC, at Plataeae, the Naxians took part in the battle against the Persians, together with other Greeks. Thereafter, for many years the island was under the rule of the Athenians. In 338 BC, it was taken by Macedonians and later (in 166 BC) by the Romans. This was followed by the lengthy Byzantine period, during which many fine churches were built on the island, some of which are the oldest to have survived anywhere in the Balkans.

The Byzantine period was followed by Venetian rule. In 1210, the Venetian Marco Sanudo was made Duke of Naxos and built the famous castle of Chora. Venetian rule was succeeded in 1566 by Turkish occupation, during the course of which St Nicodemus the Athonite was born and lived on Naxos which played its part in the War of Independence by sending an army to the mainland to fight with their compatriots.

Photos and text taken from "Naxos - Today and yesterday" (Toubis Editions)