Antiparos

Antiparos is an small island of the Cyclades located at the West of Paros of which it is separated by a broad channel from 500 to 1.000 m.
Long 12,5 km and broad 5,5 km to the maximum, Antiparos formed a long time part of the same whole with its neighbor, as testify some the prehistoric remainders discovered on the small island to Saliagos between the two islands.

History

See also: History of Cyclades

The island knew throughout the history the same fate as its large neighbor until XVe century, where Crousinos Sommaripa gave the island in dowry to his/her Maria daughter when she married Venetian Léonardo Lorendano. It was Lorendano which made build Kastro of Chora. It repopulated also the island almost deserted by calling upon colonists. In 1480, the island passed to Venetian Pisani which controlled also Anafi and Ios.
It took again then a history similar to that of its neighbor: conquest by Barberousse in 1537 and Othoman domination then Russian in 1770-1774. At this point in time the stalactites and stalagmites of the cave were broken and sent to the museum of Saint-Pétersbourg.
In 1794, the island was practically shaven by pirates come from the Magne and Céphalonie.

The cave

The cave is the principal center of tourist interest of the island. Forgotten a long time, the Marquis de Nointel, Ambassador of Louis XIV with Constantinople, returned it celebrates in 1673. It indeed decided to make celebrate the mass of Christmas by installing a furnace bridge on one of most impressive the stalagmites, practically to 90 m under ground. Besides it engraved there its name and the date to commemorate the event.

It is in the South of Antiparos, on and around the small island of Despotiko that Theodore Bent discovered the first known and proven traces of the cycladic Neolithic civilization.

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