Remember The Alamo?

 

Photo©Nigel Summerley

This is a good year to be on Sikinos – because the restoration of the remarkable building pictured here has just been completed.

The Episkopi "temple" was once thought to be on a site sacred to Apollo; it was later a Roman mausoleum and then a Byzantine church. 

This peculiar mishmash – tidied up and made safe in a seven-year project – is an illustration of several centuries of Greek history. And I couldn't help thinking that it reminded me of what has been put back together of that fabled mission in Texas, the Alamo.

It is perhaps just all things to all visitors.

Walking by road and then footpath a few miles west from the Kastro, I could see the lone, exotic, hilltop shape of Episkopi from quite a distance.

It felt like a pilgrimage of some sort. And the reward was to sit in complete silence and solitude – and contemplate this compelling mixture of history and mystery.

Photo©Nigel Summerley