Cyclades

Here lies harmony, here lies human scale. Le Corbusier, 1936

Say ‘Greek island’, and most people picture one of the Cyclades (the ‘circling’ islands, surrounding sacred Délos): barren rocks rising from the bluest of seas, where crags spill over with villages of asymmetrical white houses, with a pocket-sized church squeezed in at every corner.

Few places are so irresistibly stark and clear, so visually pure and honest, so sharply defined in light and shadow. The Cyclades are relatively small and numerous, and as you sail or look out to sea you can always see several floating on the horizon, beckoning, framing a sunset or a rosy-fingered dawn.