Skeponi

Skeponi is a small, now deserted settlement in the interior of Naxos, empty since the 1970s. Among its ruins stands a square tower, clearly built as a mansion house rather than a fortification. Its history is largely a matter of conjecture. The land once belonged to the Grimaldi family, then passed to the Coronellis, who were of Spanish origin. Some online accounts attribute the tower to one Marco Coronello, but the only person of that name known to history lived in the nineteenth century, as the son of Francesca Crispo, the last titular heiress of the Duchy of Naxos. This makes a nineteenth-century date plausible, though the building is far plainer than the luxurious feudal mansions that survive elsewhere on the island, most of which date from the seventeenth century. An older origin, perhaps even before 1600, cannot be ruled out. The tower remains an average, enigmatic ruin, its precise age and purpose unresolved.