Agia Triada church
A huge white marble front in the middle of a small hill village.
Geraki โ CC BY-SA 3.0 gr ยท Jean Housen โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Jean Housen โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Jean Housen โ CC BY-SA 4.0
**Free** โ an open village. โ **Do not drive into it**: the lanes are narrow and winding โ **park at the entrance** and walk up. โ **Very steep with many steps** โ tiring for anyone who struggles walking, and **impractical with a pushchair**. โ **It is about 10 km from Parikia** (20 minutes); the bus serves it reasonably regularly. โ **Cooler than the coast** โ a good refuge in the summer afternoon. โ **โ The Byzantine Road**: about **3 km downhill** to Prodromos, **45 minutes to an hour**, on **paved marble that is very slippery when wet or polished** โ **a rubber sole is essential**; smooth sandals are genuinely dangerous here. โ **Little shade on most of the route and no water** โ do not walk it at midday in summer, and **arrange the return** (bus or taxi from Prodromos) before you start. โ The cafรฉs on the square are reasonably priced. Allow **two hours** for the village.
**The old capital of Paros, deliberately hidden in the mountains** โ at around 300 m in the island's interior, well away from the sea. The position was a choice, not an accident: it was built in the Byzantine period **away from the coast and out of sight from the sea** to escape the **pirate raids** that wrecked island towns. Anyone approaching by ship **cannot see the village at all**. It is the loveliest village on Paros: white houses stepped down the slope, narrow winding lanes **deliberately laid out as a maze** to confuse any attacker who got that far, balconies and bougainvillea. At its centre is the large church of **Agia Triada** in **Parian marble** โ a huge white front, surprising in a village this size. โ And the **Byzantine Road** starts here: a marble-paved way descending to the village of **Prodromos** โ the best-known walk on Paros.
A huge white marble front in the middle of a small hill village.
Narrow winding alleys designed to confuse attackers, not to please the eye.
A marble-paved way descending three kilometres to Prodromos.
Lefkes, 84400 Paros, Greece
**Because the sea was a source of danger as much as of livelihood โ and this explains the map of the Greek islands.** โ **The situation**: between the 7th and 18th centuries the Aegean was a theatre of continuous **pirate raiding** โ Arab, Turkish, western and local. **A raid meant enslavement, plunder and burning**, and an unfortified coastal village was an easy target: visible from the sea, attacked, and abandoned before any help arrived. โ **The solution had three parts**: **(1) build inland** and high, so **the village cannot be seen from the water**; **(2) make the lanes a maze**, narrow and winding and known only to residents, to slow and confuse an attacker; **(3) build houses joined together** with blank outer walls, so the village forms a single wall. โ **Which is why** almost every Cycladic island has an **old inland village** (Lefkes here, Apeiranthos on Naxos, Pyrgos on Tinos) โ **while the coastal towns are all relatively modern**, growing up after the sea became safe in the 19th century.
**Yes โ it is the best walk on Paros, given the right shoes, timing and return plan.** โ **What it is**: a way paved in slabs of **Parian marble** linking Lefkes to the village of **Prodromos**, built in the Byzantine period when it was **the main road** between the inland villages. The distance is **about 3 km downhill**, taking **45 minutes to an hour**. โ **What makes it lovely**: you walk between **stone terraces**, olives and dry walls, the view opening onto the valley and the sea beyond, **and the road itself is an antiquity** โ you can see the marble polished by centuries of feet. โ **โ The most important warning: polished marble is dangerously slippery** โ worst when wet, but slippery even dry; **a gripping rubber sole is essential**, and smooth sandals genuinely cause falls here. โ **No shade and no water** on most of it โ do not start after 9 am in summer. โ **And arrange the return before you set out**: a bus or taxi from Prodromos, or someone to meet you โ because the climb back is hard work.
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