Anaphi – West of Chora

West of Chora
The dry landscape to the west of Chora appears capable of sustaining only breaks of prickly-pear in the creases where water accumulates. But the many traditional, rural dwellings (now mostly abandoned) suggest that the land has rendered a living for generations through animal husbandry and a limited cultivation of grain. The stone farm stead, or katoiki­a, is a particular feature of the Anaphi landscape, and is different from those on other Cycladic islands. It generally comprises several buildings, grouped beside a threshing floor: a small dwelling, an oven, animal pens, a storage barn etc. The low rectangular profile is always broken by the surprisingly large baking-ovens which rise above the roof-level like truncated cones. The roofs of the buildings are flat: the rafters are covered with canes, packed and sealed with seaweed and mud, and then covered with a scattering of small, flat stones.
   After Kameni Langada (2.5km), the road west of Chora rises sharply to a curve where it levels out with wide views: due south, above the coast, is visible a long, low katoiki­a, about twenty five minutes by foot from the road. This is Pyrgi­, where the main body of the building complex is formed by the massive base of a Hellenistic farmstead measuring about nine and a half metres square, built up in courses of irregular rectangular blocks of the native stone. Although the position is panoramic, with Mount Prophitis Elias on Santorini clearly visible in front, the lack of fallen masonry would suggest that this was never a higher structure or watchtower, but a principally agri cultural building protecting and surveying the cultivated uplands of the west of the island. This area may have been much more fertile in antiquity. Today the only outbreak of fertility is at Vaghia (3.5km), where a spring has unex pectedly fostered stands of reeds and a small, vivid band of cultivation.