a.1 Acto De Ofrecimiento En La Etapa Intermedia

The distinction between settlements of different ground plan, built mainly during the period of Latin occupation in the Cyclades, is an important aspect of the built environment, since settlement form affected individual house-plans. After the establishment of the Duchy of the Archipelago, a large number of small and simple fortified settlements were built in the Cyclades in order to re-house the population of these islands that came under a new regime and a new social and governing system.

This was a practice that is encountered not only in the Cyclades, but also in other parts of the Aegean. The general practice of the Latin lords in many parts of Greece was the imposition onto a pre-existing settle- ment system of the feudal nobility, who established itself in castles and defended towers close to pre-ex- isting settlement sites. For example, the Middle By- zantine village of Askra in the Valley of the Muses was relocated or moved at the beginning of the 13th century to a neighbouring hill (site VM4), a kilometre or so from the Byzantine village, overlooked by a newly constructed feudal tower (Bintliff 1996; 2000, 44). Archaeological research in the Levant has re- vealed a similar settlement pattern, where new vil- lages, established after the Crusades, were composed not only of domestic houses alone, but also of manor houses and a tower, located in the centre of the settle- ment or on top of a hill (Boas 1999). By and large the

Fig. 5.1 Map of the Cyclades islands

meaning and function of these towers or tower- houses was military, residential, administrative, eco- nomic and symbolic; towers were generating reve- nues from the controlled territory around them, but also protected their occupants (feudal lords), agricul- tural produce and subject peasants. This shift from dispersed settlements to fortified villages of thekas- tro-type directly links us to the process ofincastella- mentoin South Etruria (Wickham 1978; 1979). 5.2.1 Fortified Settlements of the Orthogonal Plan The settlements included in this category are roughly rectangular in shape and in most cases built on flat

terrain in a plain or very close to the coast. Such set- tlement plans generally lead us to assume that these were unified complexes based on a high degree of organisation. Fortified settlements of the orthogonal plan are identified on a number of Cycladic and other Aegean islands. The best preserved ones, however, are the settlements of Kimolos, Antiparos, Kastro on Mykonos and Naoussa on Paros. Olympoi and Kala- moti on the island of Chios are also similar examples. Thus, these are settlements whose walls were con- structed in order to defend the town developing at the same time within them.

Frankish settlements presumably built according to plan have also been found elsewhere in the Mediterra- nean even before the Latin occupation of the Aegean islands during the first half of the 13th century. In the area of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem a number of such settlements have been identified, while one of those, Parva Mahomeria, has been excavated. With the combination of both textual sources and archaeo- logical investigation at the site, Ellenblum (1998) has argued that Parva Mahomeria must have been founded around the middle of the 12th century. There is no fortification wall enclosing the village to protect it from any outside danger. The houses were con- structed alongside the main road that led through the village. All houses are barrel-vaulted and multi-stor- eyed, consisting of one long central room measuring 5.5x15 m. A central Frankish building was discov- ered during the 19th century excavations at the centre of the village, and it is assumed that it was used by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for administrative, sto- rage and security purposes. The resemblance between the houses strengthens the impression that all of them were built at the same time and possibly even by the same group of builders. It has also been suggested that the village has a European character rather than a local Arab one, since there is no Arab village which was built according to an organised planning scheme (Ellenblum 1998, 88-90).

It is clear that in cases such as the defended settle- ments of Kimolos and Antiparos there were building specifications which determined the plan of the vil- lage, and subsequently, the plan and orientation of in- dividual domestic structures. Settlements and housing within them are dated either to the first phase of Latin establishment in the Aegean during the 13th-14th cen- turies (e.g.Kastro on Mykonos, Naoussa on Paros) or to the phase of resettlement, during the 15th and 16th centuries (e.g.Kastro on Kimolos and Antiparos).

Andros: Chora

At the beginning of the 13th century the island of Andros was granted to Marino Dandolo, the nephew of the Doge of Venice. Dandolo established the ad- ministrative centre of the island on the East coast, on a rock-islet at the end of a small elongated peninsula. This was Mesa Kastro, which was formed by a rec- tangular defence wall with towers, the ‘palace’ of

Fig. 5.2 Plan of Kato Kastro on Andros (redrawn after Philippa-Apostolou 1978, 106, fig. 191)

Fig. 5.3 View of Mesa Kastro and its ruins, Andros

Dandolo and a stone-built water reservoir. Kato Kas- tro or modern Chora (Fig. 5.2), which was the med- ieval town itself, was built on the elongated peninsu- la, between the bays of Parapotri and Nimborio. A drawbridge gave access to Mesa Kastro (the islet- fort) from the peninsula of Kato Kastro; a stone-built single-arched bridge stands in its place nowadays (Fig. 5.3). The 15th-century Florentine traveller

Christoforo Buondelmonti (Legrand 1897) refers to Mesa Kastro, therefore, the fort was erected during the early phase of Latin rule in the 13th century. Recent excavations at Mesa Kastro by the University of Athens (Dori et al. 2003) have confirmed the foundation of the fort on the basis of ceramic finds, the earliest of which are dated to the early 13th cen- tury. No systematic study of the proper town or Chora of Andros has been carried out. However, the excavators (Doriet al.2003) of the fortified islet off the peninsula of Chora have suggested that the‘Med- ieval’ appearance of the town is similar to other Frankish defended towns in the Aegean. Moreover, the masonry of the remnants of the Chora enclosure wall is almost identical to that of the islet-fort, indi- cating a rather Late Medieval date for the settlement. The defensive enceinte was almost rectangular in shape, following more or less the rocky coast of the peninsula. In parts, the houses built at the extreme edge of the town and very close to each other formed the defensive wall itself, while the back walls of the houses’ground floors were left blank or occasionally possessed small loopholes. The main gate of the Late Medieval town was located at Kairis Square; how- ever, the gate is only a scarcely recognisable arched passageway today. For greater security the peninsula was cut-off from the rest of the island by a deep ditch, which was crossed by a wooden drawbridge (Charitonidou 1988a). Philippa-Apostolou (1978) suggests that the Late Medieval town of Andros was established earlier and that Crussino Sommaripa built a defensive wall around it in the years between 1440 and 1462. Although not much of the original Late Medieval town has been preserved today, the fact that Chora is built on flat terrain and its plan looks almost rectangular in shape, argues that it originally was of the orthogonal plan.

Antiparos: Kastro

Kastro on the island of Antiparos (Fig. 5.4) is another well-studied example of Late Medieval planned set- tlement of the orthogonal plan. Kastro is built on flat ground, atop a gentle hill 40 m above sea level on the Northern part of the island, between two small bays. The area occupied by Kastro is a place with plentiful water resources (i.e. many wells in the area). It has been suggested that the settlement of Kastro was

founded between 1440 and 1446 by Giovani Loreda- no, a rich Venetian, who acquired the island through marriage with Maria Sommaripa, as part of her dowry (Philippa-Apostolou 1978; Sanders 1996). Loredano transferred peasant population to this bar- ren island in order to resettle it. This was a common Venetian policy during the second half of the 15th century for the exploitation of agricultural lands. At the end of the 18th century, according to von Krinen (1773), the gate still bore the coat-of-arms of the Lor- edano family.

Fig. 5.4 First-floor plan of Kastro on Antiparos (redrawn after Philippa-Apostolou 1978, 50, fig. 90)

The oldest and original part of Kastro consists of a perfectly square arrangement (53x53 m), with 24 three-storey houses surrounding and looking towards the central focus of the settlement, where Loredano’s

‘tower’once stood. The tower was circular in shape (18.20 m diam.). There is no evidence for the form of its upper part, since it survives only up to 4 m. No openings are to be found on the lower part of the tower. Scholars have suggested that it might have been either the lord’s residence or a fortified structure of secondary value, used by the inhabitants in case of pirate or other attack. The houses are formed in a si- milar fashion to those in the older portion of Kastro on Kimolos, while their dimensions are only 8x6 m

Fig. 5.5 View of the gate of Kastro on Antiparos

approximately. The gate is situated in the middle of the South side (Fig. 5.5); it is a pointed archway built of schist-stone, opening onto a narrow passageway three metres long running between the adjacent houses (Sanders 1996). Apart from the original part of Kastro discussed above, there was another, built at a later stage. A second block, which occupies the im- mediate area outside the gate of Late Medieval Kas- tro, formed a kind of yard and second line of de- fence, strengthening the approach. This addition measures 23x53 m and incorporates 21 houses and two churches. The second phase must be contempo- rary with or later than the Church of the Metamor- phosis built in 1603. The third block consists of an irregular arrangement of houses and three churches surrounding the central circular structure within Kas- tro.

Thus, the walled centre of Antiparos, Kastro, is an- other example of Late Medieval defended settle- ments in the Aegean, where the defensive wall is formed by the outer walls of houses. A lot of marble spolia has been used for the building of the defence wall, together with local schist stone. The perfect rectangular shape of the town determines the contin- uous and unbreakable relationship between the de- fensive wall and the houses, the houses and the cen- tral tower, and the tower and its position at the centre of the settlement. It further suggests that there must have been a good budget and a general plan that laid down how all these structures would be built, and this indicates the existence of a central organising body, which designed and distributed the residences to the local population. Since such a project was planned, there must have been a‘model’which influ- enced the engineer. This model could have been based upon social and functional realities or simply

‘imported’from other places with an older feudal tra- dition.

Kimolos: Kastro

Kastro on the island of Kimolos (Fig. 5.6) is dated to the early Post-Medieval period, around the late 16th century. It is built on a gently sloping plateau on the top of a hill about 70 m above sea level, overlooking fertile valleys to the Southwest. It is situated close to the best harbours of the island, which were very much favoured by corsairs and war fleets during the 17th century (Sanders 1996). Hoepfner and Schmidt (1978) suggest that the settlement was built around the 16th century and could have housed up to 1000 people. Sanders (1996) argues that Kastro must have been built by a group of twelve colonising families from the island of Siphnos not long before 1592 (on the basis of a dedicatory inscription above the door of the central Church). The Dutch historian Ben Slot (2001) has reached the same conclusion as Sanders (1996), mentioning that a Dutch historical text of 1613 informs us that Kastro on Kimolos was a‘new castle’. Ottoman sources of the early 17th century show similarities between the agricultural economies of Siphnos and Kimolos, while thetahrir defter(Ot- toman census-records) of 1670 preserves the name of the Gozzadini family (the ruling Dynasty of Siphnos) in lists referring to the island of Kimolos. Sebastiani (1687; Slot 1982, 290) noted that Kimolos had 800

inhabitants in 1667. There were 142 households listed in the 1670 tahrir defter, or 680 people ap- proximately (Slot 2001). It should be noted that the ground plan of Kastro on Kimolos implies an‘orga- nised move’ related to the general economic condi- tions in the Mediterranean. High prices of cereals in Italy and Spain led many European vessels to get provisions from the small Aegean islands. Although export of products from Aegean islands was forbid- den by the Ottoman Porte (there were never Turks living on small islands), the unsettled economic and political affairs in the Western Mediterranean world made valuable even the comparatively small but ac- cessible surpluses of the Cyclades (cf. Renfrew and Wagstaff eds, 1982).

Fig. 5.6 Plan of Kastro on Kimolos (redrawn after Hoepfner and Schmidt 1978, 57, fig. 23)

The settlement is rectangular or ‘trapezoidal’ in shape and occupies 5.2 ha. It consists of three con- centric rows of houses around a central square, occu- pied by a Church of the Orthodox rite. It contains 123 continuous two-storey houses. The oldest part of the settlement must have been the central area of the square, where twelve two-storey houses form a plan very much reminiscent of that of Kastro on Anti- paros. These must have been the houses of the twelve families who initially migrated from Siphnnos to build akastroin Kimolos towards the late 16th cen- tury. In this older neighbourhood, houses are built

end to end in series and oriented parallel with the out- side walls, whereas in the newer blocks the houses are terraced side by side perpendicular to the exterior walls. The average dimensions of a house are 2.5x7.1 m. A single perimeter street (about three metres wide) runs between the middle and outermost line of houses. There are two gates in the settlement, one on the South and another on the East side. The principal gate is located in the middle of the South side and consists of an eight-metre-passageway between flanking houses. There is a stemma or lintel above the South gate bearing the date 1675. The exterior defensive wall is 7 m in height and 70-80 cm in thickness. Local stone was used for the building of Kastro. Kimolian earth was used as mortar. The very soft tofos stone (porous sandstone) of Kimolos was used for the decorative elements on the houses (e.g.

lintels, door and window frames). Remains of the Medieval character of the settlement can be traced on the Northern part of Kastro; small polemistres or loopholes were constructed for the ground-floor houses (on the outer defensive wall), while bigger windows were left for the second storey. The‘market place’of the settlement was reserved on the Northern side of Kastro, where the slightly non-straight North- ern line of houses created some extra space (Hoepf- ner and Schmidt 1978).

Kimolos is a very good example of organised settle- ment planning of the orthogonal plan, while its lay- out is similar in structure and concept to defended settlements of the Late Medieval period. The un-plas- tered outside of the Northern outer defensive wall testifies to an un-breakable and continuously built structure (Philippa-Apostolou 1978; 2000). It is be- lieved that Kastro housed a large population of sail- ors especially during wintertime (anchor-like decora- tive patterns on door lintels above the main entrance of houses might suggest involvement of the inhab- itants in shipping and fishing).

Mykonos: Chora

An earlier example of a Late Medieval town is Kas- tro on the island of Mykonos (Fig. 5.7), one of the Aegean defended settlements that today preserve only very few original parts of their structures. It is assumed that Kastro was built before the beginning of the 15th century, since Christoforo Buondelmonti

Fig. 5.7 Suggestive plan of the original Kastro district on Mykonos (redrawn after Philippa-Apostolou 1978, 110, fig. 199)

(Legrand 1897) mentions its existence already in 1410/12 and provides a sketch of it. The town, as we can see it today, has an orthogonal plan and it is built on flat terrain right on the South side of the port of Mykonos. Buondelmonti (Legrand 1897) gives a rather orthogonal appearance to the settlement on his sketch and suggests there are four towers, which are nowadays impossible to locate. It is assumed that the main gate of the town was located on the East side of the town, next to the church ofPanagia Paraportiani

(meaning ‘Virgin by the gate’). Very few original parts of the Medieval defended town have been iden- tified within the settlement, such as part of the North- ern section of the perimeter wall which is preserved under the floor of the Mykonos Folk Art Museum (Loupou-Rokou 1999). Since we do not possess en- ough textual information or original architectural evi- dence about the town, we cannot say very much about its original appearance. It seems, though, that since the houses are built on a line next to each other, against the defensive wall, the town must have been built intentionally to house a large population. The overall size of Kastro was approximately 7200 m2.

Paros: Naoussa

The town of Naoussa on the island of Paros is a rather unique case of settlements of the orthogonal plan (Fig. 5.8). It is built on flat terrain directly onto

Fig. 5.8 Plan of the fortified town of Naoussa, Paros (redrawn after Philippa-Apostolou 1978, 93, fig. 161)

the naturally well defended port of Naoussa in the North of Paros. Buondelmonti (Legrand 1897), who visited the island at the beginning of the 15th cen- tury, already noted the existence of the town with its well and carefully constructed port, where big square marble blocks have been used for the construction of its harbour. Philippa-Apostolou (1978) suggests that Naoussa was founded during the first period of Vene- tian domination of the islands and constitutes one of the mechanisms for the establishment of the Sanudi Dynasty in the Cyclades.

Fig. 5.9 View of the circular fort at the entrance of the Late Medieval harbour of Naoussa, Paros

Fig. 5.10 View of the South gate of the defended town of Naoussa, Paros

What is unique about the town of Naoussa is its loca-