Archaeological Museum of Syros

The Archaeological Museum of Syros stands in the civic centre of Ermoupoli, close to Miaouli Square and the Town Hall that Ernst Ziller designed, and it is the island's main place to meet its earliest inhabitants. Its focus is the Early Cycladic civilization of the third millennium BC, when small communities across the Cyclades built fortified settlements, buried their dead with care and made the marble figures that later became world famous. Syros was one of the centres of this culture, and the island gives its name to one of its phases, the Keros-Syros culture.

The most important finds come from two sites in the north of the island. Kastri was a small fortified settlement on a hilltop, with defensive walls, round bastions and stone houses, and Chalandriani, nearby, was a large cemetery with several hundred graves. They were excavated in the 1890s by the Greek archaeologist Christos Tsountas, whose work first revealed how sophisticated Early Cycladic society had been. The museum displays the grave goods found in the tombs, including marble figurines with folded arms, stone bowls, obsidian blades, bronze tools and jewellery.

The star objects are the so-called frying pans, shallow circular vessels of clay with a short handle, decorated with spirals, concentric circles and in some cases a ship with oars. Nobody knows what they were used for, whether for ritual, as lids, or as mirrors, and the question adds to their fascination. The engraved ships are among the earliest depictions of seafaring in the Aegean and fit the idea that these islanders were skilled sailors who traded obsidian from Milos and metal across the sea.

The galleries are small and arranged chronologically, so the visit is short but rewarding. After the Early Cycladic rooms, exhibits trace the island's history through the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, with pottery, inscriptions, sculpture and coins that show how Syros stayed a minor but active harbour in antiquity. Labels are in Greek and English.

Plan for about half an hour to an hour. Opening days and hours change with the season and national holidays, so check locally before going. The museum sits well in a walk through the town, between the waterfront, the market lanes and the square, and it pairs naturally with a visit to Ano Syros, where the medieval history of the island begins. For anyone interested in the origins of Aegean civilisation, it is a small but significant stop.