A short history of Naxos
From Bronze Age quarries to the Venetian Duchy. The condensed version.
Naxos has been inhabited continuously for at least 6,000 years.
Archaic & classical periods
The island was famous for marble and emery. The 6th-century BC temple of Apollo — of which the Portara is the gate — was never finished, which is somehow more memorable than if it had been.
The Venetian Duchy
For three centuries after the Fourth Crusade (1207), Naxos was the capital of a Venetian duchy covering much of the Cyclades. The kastro in Naxos Town is what survives of that era.
Ottoman and modern
Ottoman rule, then Greek independence in the 19th century. The twentieth century turned Naxos from a quiet agricultural island into a Cycladic destination.
Today
Roughly twenty thousand year-round residents and a summer population several times that.
The sea in between all of these chapters, largely unchanged.
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