Disabling Directory Indexing in Apache blocks out whole site, don't know why

Question

I am trying to stop directory indexing for a specific directory in Apache (Ubuntu) and have put the following in my .htaccess file:

<Directory /var/www/xyz>
    Options -Indexes
</Directory> 

This blocks the whole site. Why?

Answer 1

Because Options -Indexes in .htaccess is recursive, is equivalent to

<Directory /your/root/>
    Options -Indexes
</Directory>

If you want to disable index only for a specific directory without recursion just put an empty index.html file there and ensure that DirectoryIndex directive is set to index.html.

Answer 2

And you put the .htaccess file in the directory which you want to disable?