Symi Island

Symi is a mountainous island in the Dodecanese, lying roughly 24 kilometres (15 miles) north of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea, with the Datça and Bozburun peninsulas of Turkey visible across the water. The island covers about 58 square kilometres of rocky terrain cut by small valleys, and its permanent population numbered 2,603 at the 2021 census — a fraction of the roughly 22,500 people who lived here at the island's 19th-century peak.

Greek mythology places the birth of the Charites on Symi, and the island takes its name from the nymph Syme; Homer's Iliad lists it as the domain of King Nireus during the Trojan War. A naval engagement was fought off Symi in 411 BC during the Peloponnesian War. The Knights of St John took control of the island in 1309, and it passed to Ottoman rule in 1522 alongside Rhodes, retaining local privileges that let trade and shipbuilding keep flourishing.

Symi's wealth in the 19th century came from sponge diving and shipbuilding, and the profits are still visible in the pastel neoclassical mansions that climb the hillside above the harbour, split between the waterfront quarter of Yialos and the upper town of Chorio. Italy occupied the Dodecanese from 1912 (formalised in 1923); German forces held Symi from 1943 until a British-Greek raid evacuated the island in 1944, and it was formally united with Greece only in 1948. Symi's economy now runs on tourism, though its sponge-trading past is still marked through a sister-city tie with Tarpon Springs, Florida, formed in 2008 in recognition of the shared sponge-fishing heritage. An island so layered in history and colour is best reached during a gulet cruise along the Greece coast, letting visitors take in its harbour towns from the water before stepping ashore.