MANDHRÁKI is the deceptively large port and island capital, with blue patches of sea visible at the end of narrow streets lined with tightly-packed houses, whose brightly painted balconies and shutters are mandated by law. Except for the tattier fringes near the ferry dock, where multiple souvenir shops and bad tavernas pitched at day-trippers leave a poor first impression, the bulk of the place is cheerful and villagey, arrayed around the community orchard or kámbos and overlooked by two ancient fortresses.

 

Into a corner of the nearer of these, the fourteenth-century Knights' castle, is wedged the little monastery of Panayía Spilianí , built on this spot in accordance with instructions from the Virgin, who appeared in a vision to one of the first Christian islanders. The monastery's prestige grew after raiding Saracens failed to discover the vast quantities of silver secreted here in the form of a rich collection of Byzantine icons. During 1996-97, the Langadháki area just below was rocked by a series of earthquakes, damaging a score of venerable houses (mostly repaired now), and rendering the small folklore museum homeless, though it was never really worth the admission fee for a couple of mannequins in traditional dress. A new combination archeological-ethnographical-historical museum has been built on the kámbos with money donated by the Nissyrian founder of the Vitex paint company.

As a defensive bastion, the seventh-century BC Doric Paleókastro (unrestric-ted access), twenty-minutes' well-signposted walk out of the Langadháki district, is infinitely more impressive than the Knights' castle, and ranks as one of the more underrated ancient sites in Greece. You can clamber up onto the massive, polygonal-block walls by means of a broad staircase beside the still-intact gateway.