Paleochora, the town of churches

For about a thousand years the people of Aegina lived not by the sea but here, on a rocky hill in the middle of the island, out of sight of the pirates. Paleochora, 'the old town', was founded in the Byzantine period, probably in the ninth century, after Arab raids made the coast too dangerous. It was sacked by the Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa in 1537, rebuilt, and finally abandoned in the early nineteenth century, when the islanders moved back down to the harbour. The houses have gone, but more than thirty small churches survive among the rocks and thyme, several with faded frescoes, together with the walls of a Venetian castle on the summit. It is sometimes called the 'Mystras of the islands', after the Byzantine ghost town in the Peloponnese.