Testimony to a Cyclades forever gone

There was a time when the Cyclades – famed for their whitewashed villages with blue-domed churches clinging to hillsides descending to bays of crystalline waters – had not been discovered by tourism. Unspoiled, they abided by their own codes, symbols and tools, age-old dialects and traditions molded by the winds and the waves. Boat links to Piraeus were sparse and often testing. A book titled “Cyclades” (Pechlivanidis & Sia, 1960) depicts the islands before tourism, with photos by Maria Chrousaki, Spyros Meletzis, Dimitris Harissiadis and Pavlos Mylof. [Spyros Meletzis]