Delos Island is part of the Cyclades Island Group, Greece.

Access to Delos is only via Mykonos. A selection of boats leave every morning (weather permitting), except Mon, from 9am onwards from the old harbour of Mykonos (south mole) and make the 30 minute crossing to Delos, returning regularly up until 3pm when the site closes. Average cost: €12 r/t.

Rhenia, which is also a restricted archaeological area, can only be visited by making private arrangements with a caïque service in Mykonos.

The harbour area
The ancient Sacred Harbour, where visitors and pilgrims arrived in antiquity, lies to the north of the disembarkation mole and the former Commercial Harbour to its south. Both have filled with sand and no longer possess their original outline. They were protected by a breakwater of granite blocks, 160m long, built in Archaic times, most of whose remains are now underwater. The modern mole, made of debris removed during the excavations, projects into the water between the two. The Commercial Harbour, extending to the south, was divided by moles into five basins. Some of the mooring stones are still visible.

Functioning like an entrance-vestibule for the sanctuary at the landward end of the modern mole, is an irreg ular open space called the Agora of the Competaliasts (see below). Its wide space was articulated by a circular shrine in its centre and (to south) a larger, square based Doric structure, both of which were offerings of another association—the ‘Hermaists’—to their patron god Hermes and his mother, Maia. The same association probably also built c. 150 bc the Ionic Naiskos, or shrine on the north side of the square, in front of which stands a marble offertory box adorned with a relief of two knotted snakes on its upper face. The metal fixture for the box is still visible.

Some of the names—‘Competaliasts’, ‘Hermaists’, ‘Posei doniasts’—which are associated with certain buildings on Delos are unusual. The names refer to what are in effect ‘guilds’, and they date from the arrival of foreign merchants from the Levant and from the Italian peninsular and Sicily who, though present on Delos from as far back as the 3rd century bc, settled in increasing numbers from c. 125 bc onwards. These foreigners, both citizens and freed men as well their slaves, organised themselves in societies or groups of a combined social, religious and commercial nature under the patronage of particular divinities—Poseidon, Hermes, or the Lares Compitales (Roman ancestral guardian-spirits of the crossroads). Yearly officials were appointed for the societies. The buildings or agoras which bear their names, were constructed either with communal funds or occasionally with the specific benefaction of a member, and they represent the last developments in the city’s urban design. They constitute an entirely new kind of civic focus, and are often constructed over the site of earlier buildings of a different nature.

Delos, the Archaeological site

(Open daily 9–3, except Mon & public holidays. The return boat fare does not include admission to the site.)

Already from the arriving boat the ruins can be seen stretching over a considerable area along the shore and up the hill behind. The shuttle-boats moor on a new mole constructed in what was the middle of the ancient harbour. The extension of the line of this mole eastwards roughly divides the site in two—the sacred centre of the Sanctuary on the left side, and the residential and commercial area to the right-hand side. In early times, when the religious nature of the site prevailed, the centre of activity was the former; while, during the later ascendancy of the commercial importance of the island, the rising slopes to the right became a new focus of much of the island’s activities.

* Visible to the left is the area where the original temples of Apollo and Artemis stood at the heart of a large sacred court, surrounded by other sacred buildings and temples of other divinities, just inland of the mole. The sacred lake, where the palm-trees associated with Apollo’s birth grew, overlooked by the Terrace of the Lions, stretches further to the north. On the periphery of this main area and over towards the opposite shore of the island were later Hellenistic residential and recreational areas.

* Visible to the right are the residential and commercial buildings, mostly dating from the Hellenistic Age and after, which are the best preserved structures on Delos , rising up the slopes of the hill towards the city’s grand theatre which is visible above and to the right. Beyond this was a newer area given over to the communities of foreign merchants and to the temples of the cults they brought with them. Behind and yet further to the east rises the summit of Mount Kynthos (112m), reached by a cut stone stairway. Here have been found the earliest, prehistoric remains on Delos .

The extent of the site is considerable and several visits to the island are necessary to understand it adequately. A combination of the degree of ruination, the superimposition of different layers of different periods and the often mystifying names used means that patience is needed to unravel the complexity of what confronts the visitor.