May 8, 2011
You come to Delos by way of its ancient harbour. This, one suspects, is just as Apollo would have wished. For it is here, under the shade of a palm, that they say the god of light was born. Far removed from the merry-go-round that is Athens – or the fears over Greece's economic plight that have reached fever pitch – the uninhabited isle is afforded a reverence that few others know.
But for those braving the wind-swept seas on a Delos-bound ferry from Mykonos last week, there was no escaping the realisation that that crisis has also reached these hallowed parts. With litter bobbing on a film of filth off its beaches, its museum shop flooded and closed, and treasures – including the island's famous lions – consigned to a building blighted by cracks, cobwebs and rusty scaffolding, the signs were hard to ignore. Lack of staff meant most of the gems had been roped off.
"What can I say?" spluttered Fani Iosifidou, one of three employees guarding the site's myriad, poppy-strewn temples, mosaics and statues. "The culture ministry was meant to dispatch more personnel at the beginning of the season but we're still waiting. There are simply not enough of us here. If we don't close off that space," she said, pointing to the lions, "people go and sit on them. It's a terrible thing."
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