Architecture

Looking at the buildings in Chora (Naxos town), we conclude that history has left its traces on the architecture. The period that literally sealed Naxos and clearly left an impression, is the long Frankish domination.

The general picture of a traditional village in Naxos is the same as most Cycladic villages. White cubic volumes, two-storied at the most, interlocked together with unlimited oncoplastic variety and closely follow the contours, roads paved or cobbled with variable width, compose a strongly traditional landscape. In this landscape the housing style is predominantly horizontal roofs. This is explained by taking into account the climatic conditions. An element that complements the natural environment of the island, and greatly affects the landscape with its linearity, are the low dry-stone walls built on slopes in mountainous areas.

During the Frank occupation the medieval centre of Chora is created, namely the "Castle", which is the primary form of urban structure of the city. Still remaining, from the castle, is part of the outer walls, three gates and seven of the twelve towers. It was built on a hill, 30 meters above sea. According to Grimaldi during the design there was definitely an engineer, who made the allocation of land and the plans to build a fortified settlement.

The traditional part of Naxos Town, is a tight urban whole, with homogeneous morphology, due to the basic principles that defined the construction. These principles are the need of defense, economy of space, durability of construction, adaptation to the geographical and climatic conditions, the repetition of a minimum component size and utilization of local building materials and construction methods.

Naxos residential houses are divided into three categories: folk houses, mansions and towers.