Naxos

Naxos is a Greek island in the Cyclades and the largest island of that group. Its capital and largest town is Chora, also called Naxos City, which had 8,897 inhabitants out of 20,578 on the whole island at the 2021 census, and the main villages include Filoti, Apiranthos and Koronos. It was an important centre of the Bronze Age Cycladic culture and of the Archaic period of ancient Greece. Naxos is the most fertile island of the Cyclades and has a good supply of water, helped by Mount Zeus, which at 1,001 metres is the highest peak of the Cyclades and tends to trap the clouds. The island is also famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum that was one of the best abrasives available until modern times, and its fossils include the extinct dwarf elephant Palaeoloxodon lomolinoi.