Cyclades Cyclades The Cyclades (; ) are an island group in the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The name refers to the islands "around" (κυκλάς) the sacred island of Delos. The largest island of the Cyclades is Naxos. The significant Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Cycladic culture is best known for its schematic, flat idols carved out of the islands' pure white marble centuries before the great Middle Bronze Age Minoan civilization arose in Crete to the south. (These figures
History of the Cyclades to the islanders how various governments thought of their island: as a deserted, inhospitable place where no one lived willingly. Some islanders joked that they could have whatever political opinions they wished, for the government had no other place to deport them. In 1968, 5,400 opponents of the junta were deported to Gyaros, facing Andros. The refusal of governments in the 1950s and ‘60s to improve port and road infrastructure on certain small islands of the Cyclades was interpreted by the inhabitants as a wish on the part of the state to preserve places of exile still sufficiently cut off