Folegandros tours are small-group outings on Folegandros, an island of the southern Cyclades. The page starts with the Thira regional unit and the old trade in Folegandros wood. Marco Sanudo, the scholar Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen and the exile Michel Pablo follow. Short answers cover Pandelis Pouliopoulos and the Stato da Mar. They also cover the Golden Cave, Katergo beach and the South Aegean region. Nearby islands appear on Best Cyclades islands and Milos tours. For tours elsewhere in the country, the hub is Greece tours.
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What are Folegandros tours?
Folegandros tours are host-led trips on the island of Folegandros. The Thira regional unit holds five municipalities, and Folegandros is one. The others are Anafi, Ios, Santorini and Sikinos. A municipality runs its own local affairs. A regional unit is a wider district.
Folegandros tours take place in a unit created by the Kallikratis reform of 2011. The reform was a law that redrew local government in Greece. The new unit came out of the old Cyclades Prefecture, a larger district. Before it, a province of Thira covered the same territory. That province was abolished in 2006.
Folegandros ranks among the best-known islands of the Cyclades, listed beside Sikinos. The Cyclades are Greek islands of the southern Aegean Sea. Folegandros tours belong to a group whose small output fed an intense trade. That trade let the islands share their resources. Folegandros wood moved between the islands, like Santorini wine and Milos salt.
The Thira unit belongs to the South Aegean region. That region consists of the Cyclades and the Dodecanese, two island groups of the central and southeastern Aegean. Greece has thirteen administrative regions, and this is one of them. Folegandros tours run inside a region set up in the administrative reform of 1987.
- Settlements: Ano Meria and Folegandros both count among the listed settlements of the Thira regional unit.
- Powers: The Kallikratis plan of 2010 redefined and widened the powers of the South Aegean region.
- Units: The region split into 13 regional units on 1 January 2011, each formed round major islands.
The name Cyclades comes from the ring the islands formed, to ancient eyes, round sacred Delos. Naxos covers more ground than any other Cyclades island, yet Syros has the largest number of people. Folegandros tours run in this same island group, the Cyclades of the Aegean.
How is Marco Sanudo tied to Folegandros tours?
Folegandros tours cover an island once kept by Marco Sanudo in his own possession. Sanudo was the creator and first Duke of the Duchy of the Archipelago. He ruled that duchy, a state led by a duke, for twenty years.
Folegandros tours belong to an island whose Venetian lord, Marco Sanudo, was born around 1153 in Eraclea. After the Fourth Crusade, his family line took the name Sanudo de Candia. Candia was the Venetian name for Crete. He joined the talks when Venice bought Crete from Boniface of Montferrat.
Sanudo became a vassal of Henry of Flanders, the Latin Emperor, around 1210 or 1216. A vassal is a lord who owes loyalty to a higher ruler. For Henry, he fought against the Empire of Nicaea, a Byzantine Greek state. In the history behind Folegandros tours, Sanudo was noted for courage at the captures of Zara and Constantinople.
Sanudo blended Byzantine and Venetian ways of rule. Andrea Dandolo, a doge or head of Venice, wrote a history of the city around 1350. It is the first text to tell of the conquest of the Aegean islands. Father Saulger, a French Jesuit, wrote another account in the 17th century. Jesuits form a Catholic order.
- Age: Father Saulger gave Sanudo’s age as 67 in the year 1220.
- Family: The Sanudo family reached the Venetian islands early in the 9th century, after their city was destroyed.
- Crete: Sanudo joined a Venetian military expedition to Crete in the year 1211.
In the 16th century, Daniele Barbaro wrote the chronicle in widest use. He joined older chronicles into one coherent account. A chronicle records events in time order. Folegandros tours sit within the old island duchy whose story Barbaro told.
Who was Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen, in the story of Folegandros tours?
Folegandros tours run on an island whose inscriptions reached print in 1898. Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen published them, with those of Thera, Melos and Kimolos. Pholegandros, the form used, is an old way of spelling Folegandros. An inscription is lettering carved on a hard surface.
Hiller von Gaertringen was a German archaeologist and philologist. A philologist studies languages through old texts. His father, Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen, was an officer in the Prussian army. After his doctorate, he went on to Göttingen. There he studied under Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. In 1905 he married Dorothea, the eldest daughter of Wilamowitz.
From 1896 to 1902 the scholar of Folegandros tours history dug on Thera. Paul Wilski gave him strong support there. Thera is the old name for Santorini. He also brought out a new edition of the Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum. That Latin title means a collection of Greek inscriptions. Wilhelm Dittenberger had begun the work.
A supplement to the 1898 volume followed in 1904. A supplement is an extra book that adds to an earlier one. His supplement of 1939, printed in Berlin, added material to that volume and others. Newer work has not replaced the greater part of his volumes. Folegandros tours run among the islands these books describe.
- Family ties: Dorothea was also a granddaughter of his former teacher Theodor Mommsen.
- Loss: A bombing raid in 1943 destroyed his personal library and his notes.
- Cyclades: He also edited the two-volume Inscriptions of the Cyclades, printed in Berlin from 1903 to 1909.
Inscriptiones Graecae, Latin for Greek inscriptions, is a project begun by the Prussian Academy of Science. It aims to gather every known ancient inscription from mainland and island Greece. All its editorial texts are in Latin. Folegandros tours take place on one of those islands.
Why does Michel Pablo belong to the history of Folegandros tours?
Folegandros tours run on an island where Michel Pablo was held in exile. His arrest came under the regime of Ioannis Metaxas, known as the 4th of August Regime. It lasted from 1936 to 1941. Exile is forced removal from home.
Michel Pablo was a pseudonym, the public name taken by Michalis N. Raptis. He was a Trotskyist leader of Greek birth. Trotskyists follow the ideas of Leon Trotsky. He lived from 24 August 1911 to 17 February 1996. He studied in Athens at the National Technical University, and later at the University of Paris.
On the island of Folegandros tours, the orthodox communists exiled there did not admit him into their circle. Orthodox here means strictly loyal to the party line. So he spent his time among cattle and horse thieves. At that time, such thieves were punished with exile too. He met Elli Dyovounioti, his future wife, on Folegandros.
From the island of Folegandros tours, he was moved in 1937 to Acronauplia, a fortress at Nafplio. Later he was deported to Paris with his wife. There he took the name Pablo, after years as Raptis. In September 1938 he spoke for a Greek group when the Fourth International was founded near Paris.
- Early start: In 1928 he joined the Trotskyist wing of the Archeio-Marxist party, a Greek leftist group.
- Unity: In March 1944 he helped reunite the French Trotskyist parties into one party, the PCI.
- Greece: He returned to Greece in July 1946 for a unification congress of Trotskyist groups at Penteli.
The Fourth International was an alliance of Trotskyist parties. In February 1944 he became General Secretary of its European Bureau. He led the whole body as General Secretary from 1948 to 1960. The island of his exile is the setting of Folegandros tours.
What do travellers ask about Folegandros tours, and what are the answers?
Folegandros tours take place in the South Aegean region. The Decentralised Administration of the Aegean, with its seat at Piraeus, supervises it and the North Aegean region. Piraeus is the port city of Athens. Such an administration is a state office over a group of regions.
Before Folegandros tours, who was Pandelis Pouliopoulos?
Pandelis Pouliopoulos was a Greek communist who once led the Communist Party of Greece as general secretary. A general secretary is the chief officer of a party. He was sent into exile on Folegandros island. He was freed in 1926, when the Pangalos dictatorship fell. A dictatorship is rule by one leader with total power.
On Folegandros tours, what was the Stato da Mar?
The Stato da Mar was one of three parts of the lands Venice held. The others were the Dogado, meaning Venice itself, and the mainland Domini di Terraferma of northern Italy. Folegandros, under the name Policandro, appears in its lists for 1207 to 1566. Venice kept the Cyclades until the 16th century.
Which caves and beaches belong to the island of Folegandros tours?
The Golden Cave lies on Folegandros, an island of the Cyclades. The Cave of Georghitsi sits near Karavostasis, on the same island. Katergo and Agios Nikolaos are two beaches on Folegandros. Caves are open spaces inside rock, shaped by nature. Beaches are shores of sand or small stones at the water’s edge.
What does the region of Folegandros tours hold in inhabited islands and people?
The South Aegean region holds 50 inhabited islands, Rhodes, Mykonos and Santorini among them. Between 2011 and 2021, only two Greek regions grew in population. This was one, and Crete was the other. Its population grew by 15,527 people, or 5%. It overtook Epirus and now ranks ninth among Greek regions by population.
Featured photo: Tiku, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.