The marble frame
Four colossal blocks standing alone since the 6th century BC.
Olaf Tausch โ CC BY 3.0 ยท C messier โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท C messier โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท C messier โ CC BY-SA 4.0
**A colossal marble doorway standing alone on an islet, with nothing behind it** โ the symbol of Naxos and the first thing you see arriving by ferry. It is all that remains of a **temple of Apollo** begun by the tyrant **Lygdamis** in the 6th century BC, intended to be the largest temple in Greece โ **then he fell from power and it was never finished**. The doorway itself is a frame of **four marble blocks**, each weighing around twenty tonnes, six metres high. The reason it survives is simply that it was **too heavy to carry away** โ the temple's other stone was looted over the centuries to build the castle and the houses, and the door remained because nobody could dismantle it. It stands on the small islet of **Palatia**, reached by a **short level causeway** from the harbour. โ And it is **the sunset place on Naxos**: in certain seasons the sun goes down inside the frame itself.
Four colossal blocks standing alone since the 6th century BC.
The sun setting inside the opening itself in certain seasons.
Old Naxos and its castle seen from the islet across the water.
Palatia islet, Naxos Town, 84300 Naxos, Greece
**Because the man who began it lost power โ a recurring story in ancient megaprojects.** โ **Who he was**: **Lygdamis**, tyrant of Naxos in the 6th century BC, when the island was **the strongest and richest of the Cyclades** on marble and farming. He wanted a temple of Apollo **greater than anything in Greece** โ a political statement in stone, exactly as his contemporaries on Samos and at Athens were making. โ **What happened**: **he was overthrown** before the project was completed, and work stopped where it stopped โ at the foundations and the doorway. Nobody resumed it. โ **And why only the door survives**: the temple's stone was **reused** over the centuries โ carried off to build the Venetian **castle of Naxos**, houses and churches, which is the fate of most ancient buildings in Greece. The doorway, though, is made of blocks **weighing about twenty tonnes each**, and there was no way to dismantle and move them. โ **So the Portara is not what was chosen for preservation โ it is what could not be taken.**
**Both โ which is rarely sensible advice, but here it is free and ten minutes away.** โ **Sunset** is the spectacle you came for. The sun drops into the sea directly behind the doorway, the marble turns gold and then a dark silhouette against orange. โ **But it is genuinely crowded**: dozens โ sometimes hundreds โ standing on narrow rocks, photographs full of people, and the rocks slippery in the dark. โ **Early morning**: before eight the islet is **completely empty**, the light is soft from the east, and you can stand under the doorway alone, touch the marble and take in the scale of the blocks โ which **cannot be done at sunset**. โ **The ideal arrangement**: **morning to see it, evening to watch the sunset**. โ **A safety note for sunset**: bring a phone torch for the way back โ the rocky path is unlit and the edges unfenced.
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