Sifnos, The poets island

Sifnos. At the Cycladic landscape civilization flourished through the daily routine, the celebrations, the religious festivals, the whitewashing of the house taking care of the cobbled lanes, the maintenance of the dry stone walls in the fields, the wise cultivation of the land, the creation of works of art for clay, the picking of the olives, the meeting with the saltiness of the sea. The houses harmoniously woven knitted with the natural landscape even today emphasize the need for the respect of the civilization with which they harmoniously boarded with the passing of the centuries.

Here one still can find routes lined with stones, forests with cedar-trees and oak-trees, lentisk and olives groves, sand hills and sea plants (like little lilies) which are threatened with extinction from the Mediterranean coasts. Today we are invited to pass into a future which is much friendlier towards civilizations and the environments which were both created and respected by previous generations.

Sifnos is the birthplace of perhaps the best known chef and food writer, Tselementes, and of Markou, another highly esteemed of Greece, has a delicious local cuisine. Make sure you try some of the local specialties, such as revithokeftedes (chickpea-balls), manoura or mizethra (local cheese), ambelophasoula, a local variety of beans accompanied by skordalia (a thick spread of sauce made of garlic), chickpeas cooked in the oven, salad with locally produced capers, and lamb cooked in mastelo (special ceramic pot). The Sifnian home-made cookies and pastries are also famous, such us biscuits, almond cookies, little pies filled with local cheese and the local variety of sesame snaps.

 Sifnos is the rampart of development and propagation of pottery in the area of the Cyclades. The first samples of pottery art date back to the early Cycladic period (small statues, decorative items and utensils) and this art continues since then until today. Initially, the pottery shops were located in the inland, near Artemonas and Ano Petali, in order to be protected from the invasions of pirates dominating in the Aegean Sea. Later, they were transferred to the island's bays and particularly to those protected by the strong north winds.

continue>>>