SEAS the DAY

Among the islands of Cyclades, even of the world, Milos stands luminously in the history of art. Not because a great artist came from here, or was inspired by it, but rather because of a chance discovery in its soil.

On 8 April 1820 an ensign in the French navy and amateur archaeologist named Olivier Voutier went ashore to dig in the vicinity of the island’s ancient theatre. He noticed a farmer a few paces away pause in his labours, peer through a gap in an old wall, register an expression of surprise, and then turn away. Voutier was curious. He went to the wall to have a look. In the recess within he saw a shape, the naked torso of a woman, carved in marble, lying on her side. He paid the farmer to help him dig it out. Torso was followed by draped legs, a wedge from the hip, plinth, foot and other fragments. Wedge and torso were stacked on the legs and in the afternoon light what would become known as the Venus de Milo stood before Ensign Voutier.

How the gouged, dusty, battered figure, arm-, foot- and noseless, became the entrancing star of the Louvre is a tale of disputatious and counterfeit scholarship, lies, cover-ups, vanity and restorations both inept and artful. Above all it is a tale of one-upmanship among imperial nations, for not long before the Venus arrived in Paris, the British government acquired sculptures taken from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin, who had refused a higher bid from Napoleon, and installed them in the British Museum, making it the pre-eminent institution of its kind in the world. The directors of the Louvre were piqued. The Venus would be an eloquent riposte, but there was a problem. It would only be important enough if she was from the Classical Age and evidence suggested that she dated from the later, more prosaic Hellenistic period. Patriotic scholars were deployed. It was as if the empire depended upon it. The scholars delivered the verdict expected of them, the Germans were suspicious, war was waged in academic journals, evidence was destroyed, veils drawn and ambiguity allowed to prevail.

Once displayed, the multitudes thronged to see her, as they still do. Whatever her age, she paid back for the attention given her with her mystique, serenity, timelessness and ease with her own beauty. The life force in the Venus’s cocked leg, her gaze and slight twist of torso as the robe slips from her hip make her godliness proximate, earthy, even human. She’s been salt cellar, lamp, promoter of Mercedes-Benz cars and subject of a song by Chuck Berry. The artists Rodin, Dalí, Max Ernst and Jim Dine have all remade the Venus according to their own visions. When she travelled to Japan, 100,000 people went to the harbour to greet her.

Milos is an astonishing spectacle of colour and form. It has the most varied and impressive beaches somebody has ever seen. Milos’s colours and wealth and the shaping of its history derive from its having been flung out of the sea by volcanoes that blew around two million years ago, the principal crater forming one of the largest harbours in the Aegean at Adamas (‘diamond’ in Greek). Hot springs praised by Hippocrates still bubble up around the island. Obsidian was its first star mineral, the traders at Phylacopi selling it to the Minoans for weapons and razors. Pliny wrote of alum that rivalled Egypt’s and declared that it had the most abundant supply of sulphur in the known world. At Theorychia you can see the haunting remains of a sulphur mine clinging to a cliff striped in yellow, rusting wagons still on the tracks, the water crystal clear, the beach stones like a painter’s palette with the colours running together, an odour of rotten eggs in the air. An 11,000-year-old mining industry still thrives through the collection of kaolin, baryte, pozzolan and bentonite. All this geological munificence has produced crystals, solidified volcanic ash and streaks of oxidised metals that make you feel you are in a place that has been dreamed up rather than naturally evolved.

Milos has more than 70 beaches. It also has catacombs second only in historical significance to Rome’s, the remains of an amphitheatre that once held 7,000, a pretty capital in Plaka with labyrinthine streets, a castle on a high summit, and archaeological, maritime, ecclesiastical, folk, war and mining museums. You move through monuments of stone and never see the same thing twice. Even the open-cast mine at Voudia will amaze you. It’s like a gigantic, multi-coloured mineral version of Chinese terraced agriculture.

If the great bay were a mouth, the cape containing Skinopi would be its upper jaw. Here the island is at its most dense, with the harbour town of Adamas down around the molars and, going northwards, Tripiti, Plaka, the syrmata villages, the catacombs, amphitheatre and site of the Venus discovery. East along the north coast is one of the most startling natural events you might encounter: the narrow blue bay at Sarakiniko, its arms bone-white rock, a kind of petrified foam with undulations like bed sheets in the wind, and occasional eruptions of Dalí-style swirls. Near the water level, pirates’ chambers have been cut out of the stone. Further along, at the north-eastern tip, is serene Pollonia, which has Milos’ best hotels, some excellent harbour-side restaurants and the island’s only commercial winery, Kostantakis.

The beaches of Milos have a unique allure. You wake up wondering what they will offer. There is one, or more likely a dozen, for any taste. At Paleochori you can have lamb or fish cooked in the geothermal sand. Firiplaka is gold, purple, rose and white. My favourite was next to it at Tsigrado, which you lower yourself to by rope through a crevice in the cliff.

The experience of both road and beach becomes more exalted as you move into the wilder and emptier west. Beyond a certain point a four-wheel-drive is required, but the rougher the road, the more thrilling the vistas. In altitude and variety it is a kind of desiccated Big Sur, with gambolling goats and strewn crystals and obsidian thrown in. In the south-west corner at Kleftiko the track leads to the well-husbanded oasis of Agios Ioannis monastery. Below is a glorious beach with what seemed like three chambers, white-walled at the end, the water luminous, each stone an absorbing piece of jewellery.

You cannot get the full impact of Milos unless you take in its circumference from the water. There is the swimming in turquoise bays you could not otherwise get to, the octopus tenderised in the boat’s wake that you will have for lunch, the air and light and camaraderie. But above all, it is the experience of rock that acquires a new dimension. It’s difficult to believe you are looking at something in nature. You sense the explosion that vaulted them from the sea. The feeling intensifies as you round the island through the day, the cliffs in their reds and yellows and blues and whites like immense abstract canvasses, encrusted rocks rising from the water stark as Giacomettis, massive white Moore-like forms with curves and ripples and holes. Then you round Vani on the north-western tip and turn into the harbour at sunset, passing towers of manganese and other volcanic rock in black, blue and green, patterned like snakeskin. The island has become a gallery. It is thought that a singer and sculptor named Alexandros, from Antioch, carved the Venus. Milos from the water appears like a monumental act of the imagination, something an artist would do if they were a god. Then, at twilight, you touch gently down at Adamas, the taverna lights calling you in.

WHERE TO EAT ON MILOS

The waterside taverna Medousa at Mandrakia (+30 2287 023670) is memorable as much for the setting as the food. Navagio in Adamas (+30 2287 024124) is also nice and Armenaki in Pollonia (+30 2287 041061) is fantastic.