Plaka, the capital on the hill

Plaka sits high on a hill on the north-west side of the island, with Tripiti, Triovasalos and Pera Triovasalos running into it along the same ridge. Below it, on the slope down to Klima, lay the ancient city of Melos, and on this rock above it the islanders have had a fortress for a very long time.

The castle you climb to today was built in the Middle Ages, when Milos belonged to the Venetian dukes of Naxos. The houses were built in a ring around the hill, so that their outer walls formed the wall of the castle. Most of the old Kastro has gone, but the path still climbs through what remains, past chapels and old walls, to the church of Panagia Thalassitra, the Virgin of the Sea, at the very top.

For centuries the capital of the island was not here but at Zefyria, in the plain to the south-east. In the late 18th century epidemics, and by some accounts volcanic fumes from the ground, emptied it, and its people moved up to the healthier hills. Plaka grew into the capital, and it has stayed one.

The village is built the Cycladic way: white cubes with flat roofs, outdoor stairs, pots of basil and bougainvillea on the steps, and small churches at every turn. Above the cliff on the edge of the village, the church of Panagia Korfiatissa has a wide terrace that hangs over the sea, one of the best places on the island to watch the light fade.

Plaka is also where Milos keeps its past. The Archaeological Museum, in a handsome neoclassical building, holds the clay figure of the Lady of Phylakopi, obsidian blades and pottery from the Bronze Age town, and a copy of the Venus de Milo, whose original was found in a field just below the village in 1820. A few steps away, the Folklore Museum shows how the islanders lived in the last centuries.