Agia Triada church
A huge white marble front in the middle of a small hill village.
Geraki — CC BY-SA 3.0 gr · Jean Housen — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jean Housen — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jean Housen — CC BY-SA 4.0
**The old capital of Paros, deliberately hidden in the mountains** — 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** — a huge white front, surprising in a village this size. ✅ And the **Byzantine Road** starts here: a marble-paved way descending to the village of **Prodromos** — 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 — and this explains the map of the Greek islands.** ✅ **The situation**: between the 7th and 18th centuries the Aegean was a theatre of continuous **pirate raiding** — 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. ✅ **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. ✅ **Which is why** almost every Cycladic island has an **old inland village** (Lefkes here, Apeiranthos on Naxos, Pyrgos on Tinos) — **while the coastal towns are all relatively modern**, growing up after the sea became safe in the 19th century.
**Yes — it is the best walk on Paros, given the right shoes, timing and return plan.** ✅ **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**. ✅ **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** — you can see the marble polished by centuries of feet. ⚠ **⚠ The most important warning: polished marble is dangerously slippery** — worst when wet, but slippery even dry; **a gripping rubber sole is essential**, and smooth sandals genuinely cause falls here. ⚠ **No shade and no water** on most of it — do not start after 9 am in summer. ⚠ **And arrange the return before you set out**: a bus or taxi from Prodromos, or someone to meet you — because the climb back is hard work.