Chora, the village on the edge of the cliff

The ancient city of Pholegandros stood here. Its acropolis was on the height of Palaiokastro above the church of the Panagia, where broken pottery and the remains of buildings still lie among the rocks, and a stretch of its 4th-century BC wall survives a little lower down, in the cemetery of Chora. In the 5th century BC the city paid its tribute to Athens as a member of the Delian League; the poet Aratus called the island 'iron Pholegandros' for its harsh rock.

When the Venetian Marco Sanudo took the Cyclades after the Fourth Crusade and made them his Duchy of the Archipelago, Folegandros was among them, and the Kastro was built on the highest point of the old city to keep the islanders safe from pirates. It is a fortified village rather than a castle: two long parallel lanes, Kato Rua and Mesa Rua, lined with whitewashed houses with outside staircases and little balconies, a single square at the west end in the courtyard of the church of the Pantanassa, and only two ways in from the village side, the Lotza and the Paraporti. Its north side is built on the lip of the cliff. People still live in its houses today.

For centuries everyone lived inside the walls. Only after the island joined the new Greek state, when many Folegandrians went to work in Egypt, Constantinople and Athens and sent money home, did families begin to build outside the Kastro, and the modern Chora took shape: low white houses around a chain of squares. Pounta looks across to the cliff face of the Kastro; Dounavi is the place for a midday rest in the shade; Piatsa comes alive at night. In 1835 Chora became the seat of the island's new municipality.

The squares are the island's living room. Folegandrians love music, and the violin and the lute turn up at every celebration; in summer the tables of the tavernas and kafeneia fill the squares until late, over rakomelo, raki warmed with honey. At Easter the whole village prepares for days, whitewashing the paving and cooking, to receive the icon of the Panagia, carried down from her church on Easter Sunday and taken from house to house through every lane of Chora.