Kythira Island

By airplane

Everyday flights from Athens (Eleftherios Venizelos) with Aegean Air.

Flight time 45 min.

By boat

From Piraeus: with Lane Lines. It takes 7 hours and 45 min.

By car from Athens to Neapoli duration 4 hours and 15 min.

From Neapoli: with the boat Porfyrousa

By car from Athens to Gytheio duration 3 hours and 5 min.

From Gytheio: with F/B Vintsentzos Kornaros

From Kissamos: with F/B Vintsentzos Kornaros

The name Kythira (Tsirigo) has deep roots in the history of. Homer mentioned it in his epic work, the Iliad and the goddess Aphrodite , the Goddess of Love, identified with the island and takes the name Kythereia (Akythiros called the lacking appeal for man). Other important writers of antiquity referred to the island named Kythera. Among these is Herodotus , Dionysus, and even Aristotle (who admits that the island was called Porfyrousa - due to editing purple - but in his day it was called Kythira) and Xenophon (in the Greek uses the word Kythereia earth).

Isidore (geographer A century AD) claimed a "subversive" aspect, that the island was named after Kythereia Venus and not vice versa. Indeed, the first time he spoke about the importance of p keftho and its relationship with the goddess and the island. Keftho means hide love, while those who make love on the island (in the part, ie Kythira), discovering the hidden erotic passion. The name of the island in plural maybe because of nearby Antikythera.

What is the relationship of the two names of the island Kythira and Tsirigo? After studies and research suggests that the two names have a relationship of interaction, which means that either one is identical to the other or that one creates the other.It is interesting to mention that in Cyprus there area Kythrea Kythrea where found statues of the goddess Venus, while the common name of the region is Jerka.

Source: www.cengo-mely.com

• PRE CLASSICAL & ANCIENT PERIOD

There are archaeological remains from the Helladic period, contemporary with the Minoans. There is archaeological evidence of Kythiran trade as far as Egypt and Mesopotamia.Kythira had a Phoenician colony in the early archaic age; the sea-snail which produces Tyrian purple is native to the island. Xenophon refers to a Phoenician Bay in Kythira (Hellenica 4.8.7, probably Avlemonas Bay on the eastern side of the island). The archaic Greek city of Kythira was at Scandea on Avlemonas; its ruins have been excavated. Its acropolis, now Palicastro (Palaeocastron, "Old Fort"), has the temple of Aphrodite Ourania, who may well represent a Phoenician cult of Astarte.

In classical times, Kythira was part of the territory of several larger city-states. Sparta took the island from Argos early in the sixth century, and ruled it under a kytherodíkes (kυθηροδίκης, "judge on Kythira"), in Thucydides' time [4,53,3]; Athens occupied it three times when at war with Sparta (in 456 during her first war with Sparta and the Peloponnesians; from 426 to 410, through most of the great Peloponnesian War; and from 393 to 387/386, during the Corinthian War against Spartan dominance) and used it both to support her trade and to raid Laconia.

Kythira was independent, and issued her own coins, in 195, after the Achaean defeat of Sparta. In Augustus' time, it was again subject to Sparta, being the property of Gaius Julius Eurycles, who was both a Spartan magnate and a Roman citizen.By this time, the Greek cities were in practice subject to the Roman Empire. Kythira continued to exist under the Roman Empire and its Byzantine successor state for centuries. Christianity is attested from the fourth century AD, the time of Constantine; according to her legend, Saint Elessa came from Laconia to convert the island.

• MEDIEVAL & MODERN TIMES

Kythira is not mentioned in the literary sources for centuries after its conversion; in the period of Byzantine weakness at the end of the seventh century, it would have been exposed both to the Slavic tribes who occupied the mainland and to Arab raiders from the sea. Archaeological evidence suggests the island was abandoned about 700 AD.When Saint Theodore of Cythera led a resettlement after the Byzantine reconquest of Crete in 962, he found the island occupied only by wandering bands of hunters. He established a great monastery at Paliochora; a town grew up around it, largely populated from Laconia.

When the Byzantine Empire was divided among the conquerors of the Fourth Crusade, the Republic of Venice took her share, three eighths of the whole, as the Greek islands, Kythira among them. She established a coast patrol on Kythira and Antikythera to protect her trade route to Constantinople; Kythira was one of the islands Venice continued to hold despite the Greek reconquest of Constantinople and the Turkish presence all over the Near East. During the Venetian domination the island was known as Cerigo.

Kythirans still talk about the destruction and looting of Paliochora by Barbarossa; it has become an intrinsic part of the Kytherian folklore. One can easily accept the stories of locals by noticing the number of monasteries embedded in the rocky hillsides to avoid destruction by the pirates.When Napoleon put an end to the Venetian Republic in 1797, Kythira was among the islands incorporated in that most distant départment of France, called Mer-Égée. Kythira shared a common destiny with the other Ionian islands during the turbulent Napoleonic era, and is still accounted one of them; it was counted as one of the Cyclades in antiquity.

In 1799, the Ionian islands became the Septinsular Republic, nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, but in practice dominated by Russia. In 1807, France took them back only to have the British seize the islands in 1809 and set up one of their first protectorates, the United States of the Ionian Islands. The British held them for nearly half a century; under the British, they were governed by a High Commissioner who could act with both legislative and executive powers. After a long history of turbulence, never settled even by such eminent Commissioners as William Ewart Gladstone, the British discussion whether they were a waste of money or a vital Imperial possession ended with the cession of the Ionian Islands, including Kythira, to the new King George I of Greece, who was brother-in-law to the Prince of Wales. Under the British, Kythira was known as Carigo or Cerigo, as was its chief town, the name it had under the Venetian Republic.

The chief town of the island, Kythira (or Chora, "village") has the Historical Archives of Kythira, the second largest in the Ionian islands, after Corfu.

Source: wikipedia.org