Apiranthos marble lanes in the late afternoon

Apiranthos sits high on the slopes of Mount Fanari, and it is made of what the mountain is made of: Naxian marble. The lanes are paved with it, the steps are cut from it, the doorframes and arches and even the drainage channels are marble, and the houses between them are grey stone rather than whitewash. Settlers from Crete founded it centuries ago and the village still speaks with its own accent; two Venetian tower-houses stand among the lanes.

For a photographer the appeal is a coherent material. Everything in the frame is the same stone, so colour comes only from a door, a bougainvillea or the clothes — which makes it one of the easiest places in the Cyclades to dress a couple for. The covered arched passages give short tunnels of shade with light at the end, and the lanes are narrow enough that the background never gets busy.

Light arrives late and low. The village faces roughly west and south-west over the valley, so the main lane fills with warm raking light in the last two hours of the afternoon while the side passages stay cool — the contrast is the picture. Mornings are soft and clean but flatter. At five hundred metres it is noticeably cooler than the coast, which makes it the sensible midsummer alternative to shooting on sand.

Practical: it is about a thirty-five-minute drive from Naxos Town on a mountain road, and cars stay at the entrance — the village is walked. Marble polished by centuries of feet is slippery even dry, so flat shoes with grip. Island tour buses pass through late morning and are gone by mid-afternoon, which is another argument for the end of the day.