Anavatos

Anavatos clings to the top of a sheer rock about 450 metres high in the hills of central Chios, its grey stone houses so closely packed and so much the colour of the cliff that from a distance the village seems to grow out of it. Two ravines protect it on either side and it can be entered only from the north, which is why it has been called the Mystras of the Aegean. The name itself comes from the Greek for "climbing up", and in the island's dialect it means a place hard to reach.

Local tradition holds that the village was founded in the middle Byzantine period by workers brought to Chios to build the monastery of Nea Moni; another account links it to the pirate raids that plagued the island's west coast. The first core was a fortified enclosure on the summit, the Kastro, and under Genoese rule the defences were strengthened and the village spread down the eastern slope. Inside the Kastro the houses lean against each other along narrow stepped and vaulted lanes; the two-storey houses, built of local limestone on bare rock without foundations, kept animals and stores below and the family above. The church of the Taxiarchs and a three-storey building that once held an olive press, a cistern, a school and a chapel stand out among them.

The village's fate is bound to the Chios massacre of 1822, when Ottoman troops besieged and took Anavatos and much of the old village was destroyed; survivors resettled elsewhere, including Ermoupoli on Syros. The earthquake of 1881 completed the abandonment of the upper village, and the remaining families moved down the hill. Today Anavatos is almost empty, a place to walk slowly and quietly, where the silence of the stone lanes carries the memory of what happened here. The cemetery church of St George below, restored in 1992, keeps wall paintings from the 16th century.

Getting there

Anavatos is about 16 km from Chios town, the island's port and capital. Chios Island National Airport (JKH) is about 12 km away. The village is reached by road through the island's interior.