Agias Tower

On the sixth kilometre of the coastal road from Apollonas to Chora, above the monastery of Panagia, stands the tower of Agia. Built in the first half of the seventeenth century, it likely belonged originally to the Kokkos family, a powerful Orthodox clan of post-medieval Naxos. The resemblance to the tower of the Monastery of Ypsilotera to the southwest suggests the two formed a single fiefdom. Ownership later passed to the Ispanopoulos family, whose descendant Stylianos Pararas was the last resident; his niece Sofia Pararas owned it until recently. In 2025 it was acquired by Evangelos Menenakos, a professor of surgery in Athens, and restoration work is underway to return it to its fortress-like form. It remains a private residence, open only to school groups from northern mountainous Naxos. Listed by the Ministry of Culture since 1983, with a 500-metre protection zone, the tower suffered serious fire damage in 1992.