Ziros: wine plateau and memory of eastern Lasithi

Ziros: the wine plateau of eastern Lasithi

Ziros (Ζίρος) is a large village at about 590 metres, in the middle of the plateau of Chandras and Ziros and some thirty kilometres by road from Sitia. It spreads along the foot of the 785-metre height that local people call Egremnos, “the Precipice”. The roads to Sitia, Chandras, Zakros and the south coast meet here, and the village was the seat of the former municipality of Lefki, whose territory ran down to the shore at Xerokampos and took in the hamlets of Kalo Chorio and Chametoulo and the deserted Lamnoni. Fields, vineyards and olive groves set the rhythm of life: Ziros is not a backdrop arranged for travellers but a working rural centre, where the harvest and the water supply still count for more than the bustle of the seaside resorts. The place is on record from 1577, when the Venetian Francesco Barozzi listed it as “Siros”; in 1583 it had 448 inhabitants, in 1881 there were 433 Christians and 186 Muslims, in 1928 the population stood at 742, and today there are just under 400 people.

Ziros is known for its vines and its wine-making, and the vineyards of the plateau remain a considerable source of income. The village was among the first in Crete to turn to organic farming: the vines are grown without synthetic chemicals, with organic manure and a gentler working of the soil. This carries on the plateau’s old association with the vine, the dry climate and the stony slopes. The olive oil of the district has a good name as well.

Agia Paraskevi and the memory of Skalia

The principal church of Ziros is that of the martyr St Paraskevi. The three-aisled building went up in several stages; the aisles are linked by low arches on decorated piers, and on the east side there are finely carved pointed doorways in the Venetian manner. The south aisle, the oldest, contains wall paintings, among them the image of the saint herself; the date 1523 is cut into the lintel above the east door. Frescoes and furnishings preserve the memory of the Orthodox community of the plateau.

The church also holds the bones of the people of the village of Skalia, who met their deaths in Ottoman times. Skalia was a small settlement built defensively on a hillside by the track to Zakros, near Sitanos, with cliffs guarding it on the north and the outer walls of its houses forming the circuit wall. Because its people resisted Turkish rule they were – by treachery, the tradition says – shut up in Ziros and killed. The story as it is told has the Skaliots first ambushing by night a force of two thousand men that had landed at Kato Zakros, at a place called Mavra Chomata; a second expedition succeeded with the help of a priest of Ziros named Drakos, who persuaded them to leave their weapons outside the church of Agia Paraskevi. Some seventy were cut down there, and a single man, remembered as Skaliotogiannis, got away. Accounts of the date waver between the middle of the 18th century and the year of the rising, 1821, for which a massacre of the Christians of the surrounding villages by the janissary Afendakis is recorded. Of Skalia only ruins remain today, with the church of St George and a single house; the line of the walls can still be made out. For local people Agia Paraskevi is a place of prayerful remembrance: the history of violence is not kept apart from the life of the church here, and every year on the saint’s feast day wreaths are laid for the dead of Skalia.

The second church of note is Agios Nikolaos, a single-aisled, vaulted stone building of two phases. Its walls are adorned with frescoes of the 14th and 15th centuries showing scenes from the life of St Nicholas and other saints; visitors’ graffiti scratched into the plaster give the years 1507 and 1515, and the painting of the older, eastern part is said to have been finished before 1472. The western extension, with its round-arched doorway of Venetian workmanship, was added in the 16th or 17th century. The paintings link the present village with the late Byzantine artistic tradition and show that the artistic and spiritual life of Crete flourished far from the great towns and monasteries too. Outside the village stand further old chapels, of the Nativity of the Virgin, St Athanasios and the Archangel Michael. In the village they say that damp church walls on St Nicholas’s Day foretell a good harvest.

The caves of Agrilia and Lygias

In the country round Ziros there are two large caves, the Spilio Agrilia and the Lygias Spilios. Their value does not end with stalactites and underground chambers: traces of human presence from various periods have been found in them. Such places served people as shelter, as storerooms and as the setting for rites long before the present roads and villages existed. The karst landscape of the plateau also includes the gorge of Ziros, said to be the driest gorge in eastern Crete, which can be walked in about two hours; there is no water on the way, so carry your own.

The Minoan heritage of the plateau

Minoan settlements and scattered find-spots are known in the territory of Ziros and are still being studied; little has so far been systematically excavated. Those named include a country house at Pyrgales, a fortified hilltop settlement at Pentalitro, a Late Minoan building at Anemomylia, tholos tombs at Stalos and a Middle Minoan peak sanctuary on the hill of Plagia; further sites are recorded at Plakospilios, Fonias, Katsoulianos and near Chametoulo. They show that the plateau of Chandras and Ziros was drawn into the economic network of eastern Crete: crops were grown here, livestock was kept, and links were maintained with the coastal centres of Sitia and Zakros.

Ziros makes a good base for excursions to Chandras, Voila, Zakros and the gorges of the south; the E4 long-distance path runs from here in about ten kilometres – an easy three hours, north-east along farm tracks and across a small upland – by way of deserted Skalia to the springs and old watermills of Zakros. It is better, though, to linger in the village itself: to walk to the churches, look at the vineyards and sense how frescoes, the remembrance of the dead, caves and a modern ecological agriculture come together in one place.

Ziros today

Today Ziros holds its own as the quiet centre of the Sitia uplands. The people of the surrounding villages meet in its coffee houses and small shops; south-west of the village, at Pyrgioliki, a pond that recalls the former lake on the village square has some importance for birdlife as a small wetland. It is man-made and covers barely three stremmata – about 3,000 square metres – but holds water all year, a rare thing in this arid corner of the island, and draws both migrants and resident species; the community has planted trees and set up benches and a platform for watching the birds, and a short dirt road from the village runs round it. The vineyards are a reminder that the history of the place does not continue in archaeological reports alone. The village lives between ancient inheritance and present-day work.