Ano Meria, the village of farmsteads

The north wind beats on the central ridge of Folegandros for much of the year, so hard that the island's trees lean to the south. Here the farmers answered it in stone: terraces to hold the thin soil, and a round stone wall around each fruit tree, above all the lemons, called a dentrospito, a 'tree house'. The village has no springs: every drop of water was rain, run off the flat roofs into the cisterns.

The Ecomuseum, opened in 1988 by the island's cultural association, 'I Folegandros', is one of these farmsteads, restored stone by stone: a house of the 18th century or earlier with its cellar and oven, the olive press, a wine trough cut into the rock that is still stained with wine, the threshing floor and a lemon tree in its round wall. Next door, in the house the last family built around 1900, are the fine weavings of the island's women.

Ano Meria keeps the island's feasts. On the eve of Agios Panteleimon in July the island holds a great feast with violin and lute, and on Easter Monday the icon of the Panagia goes from house to house all day on foot, with the people of the village behind it and celebratory gunshots and firecrackers. In summer the cultural association holds evenings of poetry, music and theatre, and the village school hosts the Agrosourotoxynotyri, a festival of the island's cheeses.