The Cyclades are an argument about light — the particular quality of Aegean light in late afternoon that falls on whitewashed cubic architecture, turns the sea a color that resists description, and explains why the islands have drawn travelers for two centuries. Athens, too long misread as a transit point, deserves its own days before the boats.
Santorini's volcanic cliffs hold the sunset differently than Paros's whitewashed geometry or Naxos's marble, quarried since antiquity and glowing from within. Folegandros and Sifnos reward the traveler who has already done the obvious islands. The light was never the backdrop. It was always the subject.
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