Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1134723 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 355 pages

Synopsis
Aimed at travellers to the Greek Islands who are interested in the survivals of the medieval and Byzantine periods. With the map plans and illustrations, the personal tours of the sites on each of the 47 islands plus the explanations and historical settings, this is a definitive and scholarly companion.

Customer Reviews

An useful guide with major drawbacks
Many travellers and writers have been fascinated by the medieval monuments dotting the Eastern Mediterranean landscape and the books about this subject are most welcomed by travellers and students alike.
This book by Paul Hetherington deals with the medieval monuments in the Greek islands and their historical setting.
This book is up to date, its instructions on how to reach a site are, as far as I know, correct.
Historical and artistic details are given in full for each monument.
Despite these qualities this book has some major drawbacks.
There is one site map only (the medieval city of Rodhes), there are no plans or sketches of the monuments which could help the reader understanding the descriptions.
No remarks or references are made to the conservation works (sometimes achieving ghastly results) made over the last fifty years (an example: Astypalaia castle which features on the front cover of the book has its entrance facade spoiled by modern massive concrete buttresses).

The historical introduction to the subject is rather poor and sometimes the historical background of the monuments is dealt rather superficially, this is mirrored by the book lack of bibliography and by its "Suggestions for further reading", which ignores completely some important texts, as for example the "Greek Traditional Architecture" serial.
The Author does not make references to A. Gerola's extensive surveys carried out in the islands from 1900 up to the Second World War and to the huge amount of photos taken by him which portray not only the surviving monuments in much a better shape than to day, but also many of the disappeared ones.
The more recent storie of the monuments are seldom given even if they may help to explain the monument present condition, for example the poor condition of Kythnos castle is due to the fact that it was used as a refuge by the Greek insurgents in 1821.
Finally why not quoting the sometimes extensive Venetian reports on some islands? For example about Tinos the Author quotes Tournefort only, but not the long and accurate report made in 1615 by P. Ferrari and published in Rome in 1938.
Since it's the only book this subject and despite these drawbacks this volume is a useful companion guide for every traveller in the Greek islands.