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A steep twenty-minute bus ride (hourly service until late at night) takes you up to APOLLONIA , the centre of Hora, an amalgam of three hilltop villages which have merged over the years into one continuous community. With white buildings, flower-draped balconies, belfries and pretty squares, it is eminently scenic, though not self-consciously so. On the central platia itself, the folk museum (daily 9.30am-2pm & 6-10pm; ?1) is worth a visit. As well as an interesting collection of textiles, lace, costumes and weaponry, there are paintings by Nikolaos Tselemendi, a celebrated cookery teacher. Radiating out from the platia is a network of stepped marble footways and the main pedestrian street, flagstoned Odhos Stylianou Prokou, which leads off to the south, lined with shops, restaurants, bars and churches, including the cakebox cathedral, Ayios Spyridhon , and the eighteenth-century church of Panayia Ouranoforia , which stands in the highest quarter of town, incorporating fragments of a seventh-century BC temple of Apollo and a relief of Ayios Yeoryios over the door. Ayios Athanasios , next to Platia Kleanthi Triandafylou, has frescoes and a wooden temblon . Some 3km southeast, a short distance from the village of Exambela, you'll find the active monastery of Vryssis which dates from 1612 and is home to a good collection of religious artefacts and manuscripts. ARTEMONAS , fifteen minutes south of Apollonia on foot, is worth a morning's exploration for its churches and elegant Venetian and Neoclassical houses alone. Panayia Gournia (the key is kept next door) has vivid frescoes; the clustered-dome church of Kohi was built over an ancient temple of Artemis (also the basis of the village's name); and seventeenth-century Ayios Yeoryios contains fine icons. Artemonas is also the point of departure for Heronissos , an isolated hamlet with two tavernas and a few potteries behind a deeply indented, rather bleak bay at the northwestern tip of the island. There's a motorable dirt track there and occasional boat trips from Kamares, though these are only worth the effort on calm days.
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