Parikia Walking Guide: Panagia Ekatontapyliani (326 AD), the Frankish Kastro and Agora

Many travellers step off the ferry in Parikia (Paros Town) and rush straight to a bus for Naoussa, missing one of the richest historical towns in the Aegean. Built continuously on the exact same spot for 5,000 years, Parikia combines a car-free medieval market street, a 13th-century castle built out of ancient Greek marble temples, and the oldest intact Christian church in Greece.

1. Panagia Ekatontapyliani

Located in a pine-shaded courtyard just a 3-minute flat walk inland from the Parikia ferry windmill, Panagia Ekatontapyliani (Katapoliani) is one of the most important Early Christian monuments in the Greek world:

• St Helen & The Architects of Hagia Sophia: according to island tradition, Saint Helen stopped on Paros during a storm in 326 AD on her voyage to Jerusalem to find the True Cross and vowed to build a church here. In the 6th century AD, Emperor Justinian the Great sent the master builder of Constantinople's Hagia Sophia to replace the roof with a magnificent limestone dome supported on ancient marble columns recycled from pre-Christian Parian temples.
• The 4th-Century Marble Baptistery & The '100th Secret Door': step into the southern wing to see the oldest surviving Early Christian Baptistery in the Orthodox East (4th century AD) with its sunken cross-shaped white marble immersion font. Legend says the complex has 99 visible doors and windows, and the 100th secret door will open only when Constantinople is returned.
• The Archaeological Museum of Paros: walk 50 metres behind the apse into the museum to see the 6th-century BC Marble Gorgon (Medusa), the colossal Archaic statue of Artemis, and a fragment of the famous 264 BC Parian Chronicle (Marmor Parium).

2. The 1260 Frankish Kastro, Agios Konstantinos & Market Street (Agora)

Stroll down Parikia's car-free Old Market Street (Lochagou Fokianou) beneath blue-shuttered arches and jasmine to climb 5 minutes up to the Frankish Castle (Kastro): in 1260, Venetian Duke Marco II Sanudo tore down the ancient 530 BC Archaic Temple of Athena that stood on this cliff and stacked its circular white marble column drums and rectangular architrave blocks horizontally like giant Lego bricks to form the castle walls. Right on the western cliff edge stands the blue-and-white domed church of Agios Konstantinos, the #1 sunset viewpoint in Parikia.