Naousa Paros

Naousa is the fishing port on the north coast of Paros, at the head of a wide bay that cuts deep into the island. Venetians founded it in the late fourteenth century, and it has worked as a harbour ever since: the caiques still tie up along the quay and land their catch a few metres from the tables that will serve it.

The Venetian Port and What Followed

A fortress went up early on to protect the new settlement, and part of it still stands at the entrance to the harbour. Paros passed to the Ottomans in the sixteenth century, and the shape of the bay — wide, deep, hidden from the open sea — made it as useful to corsairs as it was to legitimate trade.

Its strangest chapter came in the 1770s. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74 the Russian fleet took the bay as its forward base in the Aegean, and from 1770 to 1775 Naousa, known in Russian as Auza, was the administrative centre of Alexey Orlov's expedition. When the Russians withdrew the town shrank back to a village, and it entered the Greek state after the War of Independence.

Koukounaries

On the southwest shore of the bay, above the wind-worn granite of Kolymbithres beach, stands the hill of Koukounaries. A Mycenaean settlement was founded on its summit after 1200 BC behind cyclopean walls, apparently by people arriving from the mainland, and at its centre was a large mansion that burned down around 1150 BC.

Demetrios Schilardi excavated the site for the Athens Archaeological Society between 1976 and 1992. What he found there matters beyond Paros: occupation on the hill continues down to the middle of the seventh century BC, which makes it one of the fullest records anywhere in the Aegean of the centuries between the collapse of the Bronze Age and the archaic period.

The Village Today

Naousa has become the fashionable end of Paros. Whitewashed houses, bougainvillaea, lanes barely wide enough for two people to pass — and behind those lanes, boutiques, restaurants and bars that run late into the night. The church of Panagia Pantanassa stands on the main square, with older chapels scattered through the quarter behind it.

Eating runs from tavernas serving whatever the boats brought in that morning to international kitchens with prices to match, and the beaches ringing the bay, Kolymbithres among them, are what fills the village in August.

Pressure on the Bay

Growth has come at a cost, and the state of the harbour water and the coast around it is a live local argument rather than a settled matter. Paros is better organised about it than most Greek islands: Clean Blue Paros works island-wide to cut single-use plastic and keep it out of the sea, with local businesses signed up to the scheme.

Arriving by Water

The bay is deep and well sheltered, easy to enter, and there is room to anchor off the beaches on its western side rather than in the crowded harbour. Naousa is a popular stop for gulet charter guests exploring Greece largely for that reason: you can spend the evening among the fish tavernas and be swimming off an empty stretch of Cycladic coast before breakfast.