Nikia Village

Nikia occupies the rim of the Nisyros caldera in the Dodecanese, about 400 metres above the sea and roughly 14 kilometres by road from Mandraki, the island's port and main village. The position gives it two entirely different outlooks: one side of the village faces the open Aegean, the other drops into the crater floor of a semi-dormant volcano. That contrast, and the black volcanic stone the place is built on and out of, is why visitors climb up here at all.

The village is a warren of narrow cobbled lanes. Whitewashed houses with tiled roofs, brightly painted doors and pebbled courtyards stand out hard against the dark rock underneath them, and the layout — roughly elliptical, following the curve of the rim — means most streets end at a view.

The Volcano Below the Village

Nisyros is one of the active volcanoes of the South Aegean Volcanic Arc, alongside Methana, Milos and Santorini. Activity here began around 160,000 years ago, and the island as it now exists — its rock formations and its unusually fertile soil — is the product of that history. Volcanic stone has been the standard building material on Nisyros for centuries and turns up in landmarks all over the island, including the bell tower of the Church of Agios Ioannis Theologos just outside Nikia.

The flat caldera floor visible from the village is called Lakki, and it holds five craters. The largest and most visited is Stefanos, roughly 260 by 350 metres and up to 27 metres deep — one of the biggest hydrothermal craters anywhere, with fumaroles and mudpots still working on its floor and a sulphur smell that reaches the rim on a still day. The most recent violent event on Nisyros was in 1888, a steam explosion that opened a cylindrical crater at least 25 metres across. Visitors can walk down onto the crater floor, which is what brings most people to the island in the first place.

Visiting the Village of Nikia Today

The centre of Nikia is its main square, known locally as Hochlakia after the paving: smooth black pebbles set into a mosaic. The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary stands on the square, and the Monastery of Agios Ioannis Theologos, which holds old wall paintings and rare icons, is in the village itself. The seventeenth-century Monastery of Panagia Kyra lies elsewhere on the island, inland of Emporios, and is worth the detour for anyone driving the caldera road.

The Volcanological Museum of Nisyros is the only museum of its kind in Greece. It opened in 2008 in a renovated nineteenth-century schoolhouse in Nikia, and its exhibits cover the genesis and structure of volcanoes, volcanic processes and products, and Greek volcanism, with Nisyros treated in detail. The collection includes some 250 volcanic rock specimens drawn from across the country, and the displays are interactive, with three-dimensional animations rather than cases of labelled stone. The building also has one of the better views of the caldera on the island.

Nisyros sits between Kos and Tilos and is off the main ferry circuit, so most visitors reach it on their own keel. The harbours at Mandraki and Pali put the caldera road within a short drive, and on a Dodecanese route Nikia is worth a visit if you're chartering a gulet in Greece for the simple reason that an hour ashore buys a view over an active crater that no coastal village can match.