Kastro (Greek: Κάστρο) is a settlement in

Sifnos Sifnos ( el, Σίφνος) is an island municipality in the Cyclades island group in Greece. The main town, near the center, known as Apollonia (pop. 869), is home of the island's folklore museum and library. The town's name is thought to come f ...

Cyclades The Cyclades (; el, Κυκλάδες, ) are an island group in the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The nam ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

. According to the 2011 census it had 118 inhabitants. Kastro is built on top of a steep hill near the eastern coast of the island, at an altitude of 80 meters. Below the hill there is a small bay, which was used as the port of the settlement.

History

Kastro was probably created in the 14th century, and may have been built by the House of Coruña, who captured the island from the Byzantines in 1307. In the ruins of Despotikos, which was the residence of the local lord, there is an inscription from 1365, with the name of Giannoulis da Coruña. The earliest known mention of Kastro is by

Cristoforo Buondelmonti Cristoforo Buondelmonti (c. 1385 – c. 1430) was an Italian Franciscan priest and traveler, and a pioneer in promoting first-hand knowledge of Greece and its antiquities throughout the Western world. Biography Cristoforo Buondelmonti was born ar ...

in the ''Isolario'' of 1420. Kastro became the main village of the island with estimations of its population in the beginning of the 17th century being at 5000 residents. It remained the principal settlement of the island until 1836, when Apollonia was designated as the capital of the island.

Geography of the settlement

Kastro is built around a hill and the houses and streets form an oval shape following the surface of the hill. Buildings are relatively small, with most of them having an area of around 30 square meters and one or two floors (including ground floor).

Places of interest

The Archaeological Museum of Sifnos, that started operating in 1986, is situated in Kastro. It hosts collections with sculptures, pottery and coins of

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Roman antiquity In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 B ...

. In the settlement of Kastro there are also ancient marbles, columns and

sarcophagi A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a cadaver, corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from ...

References

{{Reflist Villages in Greece Populated places in Milos (regional unit)