Naxos

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in Neolithic times; on the upper floor finds from the Greek, Roman and Byzantine periods are on display, including a statuette of a goddess on her throne dating from the sixth century B.C., coins with their original moulds and displaying Greek influence, vases, oil-lamps, weaving-weights and other everyday objects.

Dagmar Nick wrote thus of the rubble-strewn terrain, once the proud core of Greek life on Sicily and now boxed in between holiday homes and an orange-grove: "Nowhere in Sicily is so little of the past to be found and yet so much reverence to be felt as here in front of the altar steps which have slid down into the earth or standing before the foundations of a town-gate which are older than those of Rome. This lonely stretch of black lava is the place for all those wishing to find the very roots of Sicily rather than go home with nothing but the mad noise of some pleasure-beach or other ringing in their ears."

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town walls running parallel to the Santa Venera River, as well as sections of the town itself. Both an older (seventh/sixth centuries B.C.) and a later period were unearthed, the latter beginning with the exile in 466 B.C. and ending with the destruction of the town in 403 B.C.

Coming from the west the visitor will see a 300m/1,000ft long section of the town wall dating from the late sixth century B.C. It is made of roughly-hewn, polygonal blocks of lava. To the south it adjoins an area set aside for religious rituals; here were found traces of a small shrine (Sacellum A) and two seventh century pottery kilns, as well as the foundations of Temple B which was constructed above the older shrine at the end of the sixth century B.C.; it measures 14.25x38m/47x125ft and was probably dedicated to Aphrodite. The exact situation of the Apollo Archegetes altar, referred to in the literature of the time, is still unknown.

The fifth century B.C. town was laid out in accordance with the grid street system named after Hippodamus of Miletus. Some of the residential areas have been excavated.