Apollonia, the heart of Sifnos

Apollonia is not one old village but several. Small hamlets grew up on the hills in the middle of the island, and over time they ran into one another, so that today Apollonia, Ano and Kato Petali, Katavati and Exambela feel like one long white village, with Artemonas just beyond. Its name is usually linked to the god Apollo.

For most of its history Sifnos was governed from Kastro, the walled village on the east coast. Then, in 1836, a few years after Greece became independent, the capital officially moved inland to Apollonia. It was safer from the sea, closer to the fields and at the centre of the island's roads and paths, and it has stayed the capital ever since.

The village is built the Cycladic way: low white houses with flat roofs, outdoor steps, small courtyards with jasmine and bougainvillea, and lanes paved in stone and marble, with the joints painted white. Churches are everywhere. Sifnos has more than 230 churches and chapels across the island, and in Apollonia you will pass a dome or a bell tower at almost every turn. Agios Spyridon sits right on the Steno, and on summer evenings its courtyard is part of the walk.

Iroon Square, the square of the heroes, is the centre of village life, with its war memorial and the Folklore Museum. The museum was set up by the teacher and folklorist Antonis Troullos, and it keeps the island's old costumes, embroidery and lace, tools for the fields, beehives, pottery and weapons, with photographs of Sifnos before the roads.

Food is serious here. The island's most famous son, Nikolaos Tselementes, was born in 1878 in Exambela, just south of Apollonia, and his cookbook of 1910 became the kitchen bible of Greece. On Sunday mornings, families on Sifnos still take a clay pot of chickpeas, revithada, that has baked slowly overnight in a wood oven. In September the island holds a festival of Cycladic food in his name.