The capital and the largest city of the island. In the middle of the north coast, is also the transport hub with the international airport and the sea port, resulting in that most of tourism traffic arriving in Crete will pass from Iraklion at least twice. The city has a population of 120.000 the fifth largest in Greece.

Sifnos, being less barren than its neighbours, is probably the most beautiful of the western Cyclades. The island is small -- only 82 square kilometres but it has a population of 20,000 and a number of beautiful Cycladic villages. In antiquity Sifnos was famous for its gold and silver mines which were a mixed blessing for the islanders, bringing them both wealth and trouble. After the fall of Constantinople, Sifnos was granted to the Gozzadini family by the Duke of Naxos, Marco I Sanudo.

Antiparos is a beautiful, bright island full of colorful patches, right in the middle of the Aegean Sea. A place with a great history! Monuments and symbols reveal a unique culture. The creators of the Cycladic civilization lived here. In the middle of the island, upon a hill, you will find one of the greatest and oldest cave of the world. Well preserved, it offers its visitors many surprises. The island of Antiparos is becoming well known between 17th and 19th century, when foreign travelers visit it and then publish their impressions and sketches of the cave and the rest archaeological sites.

In Cyclades architecture, you will see that even the streets are all the same. It is the place where most of the activity takes place. Restaurants, bars and cafeterias all open up into the streets. The streets are like a continuation of the houses in this place. You will hardly come across grand public squares here and most of them occupy a very small area. It is usually the meeting place of people who come here to chat and spend time over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. Even the architecture of the churches in this place is in conformity to the housing architecture in each village. Of course, their blue domes have definitely made them very popular indeed among national and international tourists. One interesting feature of the two-storey houses here is that the second storey has an outside staircase to the upper floor.

This outside staircase is found in all the houses having two-storey structure. In Cyclades architecture, it is a very popular custom where it is seen that separate individuals own separate floors in the same building. This custom had started way back in the times when the Venetians owned the islands and had established their supremacy here. Once the castle walls came up surrounding the settlements, there was lack of proper places to stay for people coming into this village from other parts. At that time, many families in need of goods rented out their ground floors to these goods-trading people. Often you will come across houses in these villages that have opened stores in the ground floor whereas the family lives in the upper floor.

Thus most of the Cyclades architecture found in the villages comprise of whitewashed houses with vaulted, pitched or inclined roofs, blue-domed churches, fountains in public squares, windmills on top of the cliffs or hills, and ornately decorated dovecotes in the villages. The houses are built in such a manner on these undulating landscapes of the Cycladic islands that it appears to have been growing out of the sides of the hills.

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