Panagia Paraportiani Church, the Medieval Kastro and the 3 Museums of Chora

Directly between the Old Port and Little Venice rises the low rocky headland of Kastro ("The Castle"), the original fortified medieval settlement of Mykonos built by the Venetian Ghisi dynasty in the 13th century. Standing right where the old western sea-postern gate (paraporti) pierced the castle wall is one of the most photographed churches in the world.

1. The Church of Panagia Paraportiani (1425 to 17th Century)

Unlike symmetrical Byzantine or neoclassical churches, Panagia Paraportiani ("Our Lady of the Side Gate") looks as if it were sculpted by hand out of soft white clay or melting snow, making it a favourite inspiration of modernist architects from Le Corbusier onwards. What looks like a single building is actually five separate churches fused together on two levels over two hundred years:

• Four Ground-Floor Chapels + One Upper Dome: on the ground level, four distinct chapels, dedicated to Agios Eustathios (the oldest, dated 1425), Agios Anargyros, Agios Sozon and Agia Anastasia, were built side by side and gradually joined together. Then, in the 16th and 17th centuries, builders constructed the fifth church, the domed Church of the Virgin Mary (Panagia), directly on top of the roofs of the four lower chapels, reached by an external whitewashed stone staircase.
• Best Photography Light: visit at early in the morning when morning light illuminates the eastern bell-arch and staircase without a single person in the frame, and return 30 minutes before sunset when the western sun turns the rounded white lime curves warm pink and gold against the dark blue Aegean.

2. The Three Classic Museums of Chora (Folklore, Maritime & Archaeological)

1. The Mykonos Folklore Museum (Right next to Paraportiani Church in Kastro): housed inside an 18th-century Venetian castle-wall captain's house (free/donation entry), displaying ship models, antique Cycladic keys, cannons from the 1821 revolution and a preserved 19th-century basement bakery oven.
2. The Aegean Maritime Museum (In Tria Pigadia, central Chora): founded in 1985 inside a 19th-century marble-floored mansion, tracing Aegean navigation from Minoan oars to steamships, and featuring the original 1887 octagonal crystal Fresnel lens Mechanism of the Armenistis Lighthouse standing in its garden.
3. The Archaeological Museum of Mykonos (Above the Old Port): home to the famous 670 BC "Mykonos Vase" (Pithos), carved with the earliest known depiction in ancient Greek art of the Wooden Trojan Horse with Greek warriors peeking out of windows in its side.