Itanos

Monday we visited the Hellenistic-Roman city of Itanos. There were no ticket booths, or caretakers or information placards in any language. Remnants of a chain link fence still stood in a few places. A chain link gate was propped open with a rock cairn and we started our tour of the site from there. The remains of the basilica were the most interesting. Enough clues remained to help our imaginations fill in more of the gaps. We could see the layout of the church in the foundation stones from the double entrances into a common entry hall. The main sanctuary of the church had two alcoves on each side, perfect mirrors of each other. The far wall had a deeper, bigger alcove. Marble columns lay strewn about and within the church wall boundaries. The most interesting detail was the double entrance to the basilica. Both of the entrances were large rectangle flat rocks. In each of the two front, outside corners were single deep holes and in the middle of the front edge there was one more hole. We conjectured that double doors to the basilica mounted in these outside holes with one of the doors locking into the middle hole with a vertical locking pin. The set-up matches the double, Asian doors in our cabin, which had holes in the floor in the same configuration. Interestingly, the apartment in Lindos we locked ourselves out of had the same style of doors too. Scratches and grooves were worn in the rock from generations opening and closing the heavy doors and the dragging of the locking pins. The front of the steps were worn and hollowed from many passing feet. Colin traced the arched path of the locking pin with his finger. We all remembered the feeling of the heaviness of opening the wooden doors to Liam’s old room. We wondered who had opened and closed these doors? Somehow the understanding of the feeling of this simple motion brought us closer to another people long ago.