The 196.755 km² island belongs to the Cyclades archipelago and is located to the west of Naxos. Immediately southwest of Paros is the island of Antiparos, which is also inhabited. Together with the numerous small islets that lie mainly to the southwest and north, Paros forms a municipality in the prefecture of Cyclades. Two main peaks rise in the middle of the island: the 771 m high Profitis Ilias (also known as Marpessa (obsolete), but usually Agii Pandes on maps), on the northern side of which the deposit of precious marble was located not far from the monastery of Agios Minas, and the slightly lower Stroumboulas to the south.
Today, Paros is a popular vacation island. There is a small regional airport that is connected to Athens by Olympic Airlines. The airport was expanded in summer 2016 and is now significantly larger than before.
The Cyclades archipelago, which lies in the center of the Aegean Sea, consists of several dozen islands scattered on a plateau below sea level. This plateau extends over 24,000 km² at a depth of 200 - 500 meters. Geologically, the south of Attica and 1/3 of the south side of Euboea are part of it.
From this platform rise 8 islands with an area of more than 100 km² (in order from largest to smallest: Naxos 442 km², Andros 384 km², Paros and Tinos 195 km², Milos 161 km², Amorgos 123 km², Ios and Kea 103 km²) (1), eleven islands with an area of 100 - 30 km² inclusive, as well as 31 islands of 29 - 5 km² and countless smaller islets. The total land area of the archipelago that rises from the water is about 2700 km², which corresponds to 11% of the submarine plateau area.
The largest islands also have the highest elevations; Naxos and Andros reach a height of 1000 m, the islands of medium size, Paros, Tinos, Milos, Amorgos and Ios are higher than 700 m, the islands of about 30 km² reach a height of around 300 m, with the exception of the volcanic islands such as Thíra (Santorini), which can be relatively higher.
The Cyclades archipelago measures 220 km in the longitudinal direction, i.e. from Andros to Astipalea (2), and 150 km in width, i.e. from Antimilos (small island in the north-west of Milos) to Donoussa (small island in the east of Naxos). Andros in the north of the Cyclades is today separated from Euboea only by a 10 km wide channel; a strait of 15 km separates Attica from the island archipelago at the height of Kea. Naxos, to the east, is about 50 km from Ikaria, while Crete, to the south, is 100 km from Santorini. However, this was not always the case.
In fact, an Aegean landmass that formed around the ancient crystalline massif of today's Cyclades about 25 million years ago, at the beginning of the Miocene, still united the Balkan Peninsula with western Anatolia. Tectonic movements and collapses caused this Aegean continent to gradually break up into island groups, which were divided into a southern arc with Kythira, Antikithira, Crete in the middle as well as Karpathos and Rhodes and a northern part, the Cyclades.
In the middle of the Miocene, around 10 million years ago, the depression between the island complexes was flooded by the sea. At that time, the Cyclades were connected to Anatolia in the north and north-east. At the end of the Miocene, during the entire Messinian period, 1.5 million years ago, the entire Mediterranean dried up completely several times, with the islands separated from each other by vast abiotic (lifeless) salt flats (sebkhas).
