Naxos

Naxos is the largest island in the Cyclades and the one that actually produces food — potatoes, olive oil, Graviera cheese, and kitron, the citron liqueur unique to the island. Naxos Town has a Venetian kastro on a hill above the port. The beaches on the west coast are among the best in the Aegean. In the interior, the mountain villages of the Tragaea plateau preserve a Byzantine and Venetian layer that the coastal tourist economy has not reached. The two ancient Kouros statues, left unfinished in their marble quarries in the 7th century BCE, are among the strangest and most moving ancient Greek artefacts.