Syros: Greece's Gift to the World
The Aegean island is eager to welcome visitors—but on its own terms.
When I told my Athens-based Greek friend George that I was thinking of visiting the world-famous Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini, he grew silent. That wasn’t like George—he has the gift of gab. Something was wrong.
“They are wonderful islands,” he said after a long pause. “But the truth is that they have become so jam-packed with tourists, it’s hard to see the ‘real’ Greece through the crowds.”
Instead, George said, I should visit the island of Syros. “Its history is fascinating, its beaches are uncrowded, the food is wonderful, and the locals are super friendly.”
I did some reading and quickly discovered that George was not alone in his love for Syros. Fodor’s travel guide praised the island’s “untouristy urbanity.” A Lonely Planet travel writer scolded traveLlers who treated Syros as “a brief stopover,” and a Greek journalist noted that many of the island’s small villages had been “practically untouched by tourism.” I was hooked. I booked a flight to Athens and a ferry to Syros.
After a two-hour, 150-kilometre ride southeast from Athens’s port city of Piraeus, my high-speed ferry cuts its engines to a mild roar as it glides into Ermoupoli, the main harbour of Syros. A handful of luxury yachts are tied up at the seafront, and the semi-circular shoreline is dotted with tavernas, shops and small hotels. Instead of the traditional picture-postcard, sugar-cube houses one sees spilling down hillsides on other Greek islands, I am surprised to find that Ermoupoli, which is the capital of both Syros and all of the Cyclades (Greek for ‘circular’) island group, is composed of a cosmopolitan collection of three- and four-storey white, pink, blue and other pastel-coloured buildings that range in design from traditional to neoclassical to Italianate to Byzantine.
Under a clear blue sky, t...
When I told my Athens-based Greek friend George that I was thinking of visiting the world-famous Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini, he grew silent. That wasn’t like George—he has the gift of gab. Something was wrong.
“They are wonderful islands,” he said after a long pause. “But the truth is that they have become so jam-packed with tourists, it’s hard to see the ‘real’ Greece through the crowds.”
Instead, George said, I should visit the island of Syros. “Its history is fascinating, its beaches are uncrowded, the food is wonderful, and the locals are super friendly.”
I did some reading and quickly discovered that George was not alone in his love for Syros. Fodor’s travel guide praised the island’s “untouristy urbanity.” A Lonely Planet travel writer scolded traveLlers who treated Syros as “a brief stopover,” and a Greek journalist noted that many of the island’s small villages had been “practically untouched by tourism.” I was hooked. I booked a flight to Athens and a ferry to Syros.
After a two-hour, 150-kilometre ride southeast from Athens’s port city of Piraeus, my high-speed ferry cuts its engines to a mild roar as it glides into Ermoupoli, the main harbour of Syros. A handful of luxury yachts are tied up at the seafront, and the semi-circular shoreline is dotted with tavernas, shops and small hotels. Instead of the traditional picture-postcard, sugar-cube houses one sees spilling down hillsides on other Greek islands, I am surprised to find that Ermoupoli, which is the capital of both Syros and all of the Cyclades (Greek for ‘circular’) island group, is composed of a cosmopolitan collection of three- and four-storey white, pink, blue and other pastel-coloured buildings that range in design from traditional to neoclassical to Italianate to Byzantine.
Under a clear blue sky, these elegant mansions, smaller whitewashed homes, public buildings, commercial spaces and an ornate public square climb from the waterfront up twin conical hills, each of which is topped by a towering church, one Roman Catholic, the other Greek Orthodox. As I raise my camera to take a picture of this elegant, architecturally rich city, I realize why it has long been called ‘The Queen of the Cyclades’. George was right; there is so much here to explore.
To help me get my bearings, Syros’s dynamic vice mayor, Christianna Papitsi, has agreed to meet with me the next morning and give me a brief introduction to this historic island.
As we sip strong, foamy cups of Greek coffee in her modest office near the island’s Industrial Museum, I ask Papitsi how Syros will handle the growing number of tourists—last year about 4,00,000 people visited the island.
“You mean our ‘guests’,” she says as she smiles and brushes back her long black hair. “We like to think we can treat all travellers to Syros as our guests rather than tourists. Happily, we have not experienced the crowds—and the overcrowding—that some other destinations have, so we have the chance to preserve the special qualities that make Syros unique.”
She ticks off a list of tourism-related programs that her office is promoting, including visits to local wineries, countryside picnics, cooking and tasting workshops with Syrian ingredients and recipes, pottery workshops, and art and music festivals. “One of our main goals is to introduce visitors to our island’s local culture and traditions and let them get to know our people,” Papitsi says.
Her full title is Vice Mayor–Tourism, which reflects the importance Syros places on managing its relatively young tourism industry. She peppers her conversation with terms like “sustainable tourism” and “place authenticity.” And it’s clear she is well aware of the opportunities, as well as the possible pitfalls—such as overcrowding, inflated prices and unchecked development—that tourism can cause.
For example, while massive cruise ships have largely bypassed Syros in the past, the island recently agreed to add a limited schedule with MSC Cruises. While other destinations such as Venice, Mykonos and Santorini are trying to curb cruise ship arrivals by charging visitor access fees during the peak summer season, Syros is (carefully) welcoming the new business. Papitsi is aware that in 2023 more than 800 cruise ships, carrying almost 1.3 million passengers visited Santorini. Each year only around 30 ships, with up to 15,000 passengers, visit Syros. “We are taking it slowly,” says Papitsi. “We want to protect what we are so lucky to have. Syros and our residents are so special!”
It doesn’t take me long the experience firsthand just how “special” islanders can be. When I greet anyone with my well-meaning but clumsily-pronounced “Kaliméra” (“Good day!” in Greek), their faces inevitably explode with a wide smile and they answer with a singsong “Yia sas!” (“Hello!”). And as I walk down the narrow, winding streets of downtown Ermoupoli, I notice local residents and shopkeepers sweeping or hosing down the glistening marble sidewalks and the roadways.
Intrigued, I pop into the Kois Optics eyeglass shop and ask the owner if this is a common occurrence. “Every morning,” says Stavros Kois, who wears a bright blue pair of eyeglasses he designed himself. “Each of us does what we can to keep these wonderful streets clean. After all, we all know how lucky we are to live here!”
Ermoupoli’s diverse architecture offers a treasury of clues to the island’s fascinating past. The island’s history can be traced back several millennia. The remains of the nearly 5,000-year-old Bronze Age settlement of Kastri, about 8 kilometres north of Ermoupoli, is one of Greece’s most important discoveries of the Early Cycladic period.
During the Middle Ages, Syros was frequently raided by pirates operating in the Aegean Sea. Beginning around 1200 A.D., islanders from Venice built the then-isolated hilltop town of Ano Syros, which still stands above Ermoupoli, to protect themselves from pirate raids. The island fell under Venetian rule until the middle of the 16th century, which left a strong Catholic influence. Interestingly, while 95 per cent of all Greeks are Greek Orthodox, almost a third of Syros’s population is Roman Catholic. Today, when mixed-religion couples marry on Syros, it’s common to have wedding ceremonies in both churches.
After Greece gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830 after nearly 300 years of rule, mariners and tradesmen moved to the island from the mainland and elsewhere. Thanks in part to its large port that supported a shipbuilding and refitting facility, which still stands in the harbour, Syros flourished as the economic hub of the new state and eventually the entire eastern Mediterranean. It was an important stop on the trade route linking Europe, the Middle East and the East Indies. Other industries such as textiles, iron works, and tanneries helped the island’s economy grow.
During World War II, Syros was heavily bombed, and later occupied, by Italian and German forces, who closed factories and confiscated crops and food. An estimated 2,300 to 4,000 islanders (out of a total population of 17,000) died of starvation during the famine that followed. A telegram sent by an islander to an Athens official at the time summed up the tragedy: “Either send us wheat or coffins.”
Syros’s economic decline continued after the war but had somewhat recovered by the 1980s, thanks in part to the reopening of the island’s famous shipyard and a burgeoning tourist trade. Today, thanks to influential islanders who are working diligently to protect their island from unchecked tourism and overheated development, Syros is enjoying an ever-increasing, but controlled, rise in visitor numbers.
In a jewellery store in the centre of Ermoupoli, where I have come with my wife, Shari, to find a birthday present for her, owner Chrisanthi Zarari shows us several necklaces of her own design. Zarari eventually tells Shari, “I want you to have this one.” It’s a strikingly beautiful, asymmetrical necklace with a large tortoiseshell bead on one end and series of thin, polished stone bars on the other. “Syros is about giving, and I want to give you this.”
“No, we cannot accept—” Shari and I both insist.
“But we are starting a chain of love,” Zarari tells us as my wife begins to tear up. As she wraps the necklace, she adds, “Take this and then give something to someone else, yes? I won’t take no for an answer. Welcome to Syros.”
Later, when I meet Christianna Papitsi’s assistant, Elena Papagouna, for a tour of the nearby town hall, a 19th-century, three-story Neoclassical treasure, I tell her about the necklace. She is impressed but not surprised. “Let’s just say it’s a Greek thing,” Papagouna says as we explore the ornate building. “The spirit of gift giving is an ancient tradition in Greece. In Syros it is a way of embracing visitors.”
Indeed, it is an “embrace” that I will experience many times during my stay on the island. For example, every meal I order, whether it’s at a small taverna or a large restaurant, is invariably accompanied by a tasty dessert that I did not order. When I ask, “How much is that?” the waiter—or owner—smiles and says, “No charge. It is a gift.”
Syros is just 84 square kilometres and roughly the shape of Great Britain. After exploring its capital and visiting some of its more remote villages, where goats grazed over steep, rocky fields and sparrowhawks and buzzards circled above, I’ve decided to see what the island looks like from the sparkling waters of the Aegean Sea.
In the fishing village of Kini, I join Vaggelis Chavatzis for a tour of the coastal waters of Syros in his twin-engine, 10-metre rigid inflatable boat. For the next four hours we zip along the deep, clear blue, almost turquoise, sea on the western coast of Syros, exploring little-visited bays and remote, pristine beaches.
The first stop is the sea cave chapel of Agios Stefanos, which sits in the steep rocks just north of Galissas, one of the island’s most popular beaches. According to local legend, the chapel, which is wedged into an opening of a sea cave, was built by a local fisherman to give thanks to St. Stephen after he miraculously survived an octopus attack in the waters off the coast. “Some people get married here, and there’s even a guest book to sign,” says Chavatzis.
At the northwestern tip of Syros, we slip into the remote bay of Grammata. There’s just one other boat and only four people on the 150-metre-long white sand beach. Chavatzis explains that the bay was a haven for sailors, travellers and even pirates when fierce storms brewed on the Aegean. He notes that many of the outcroppings on the north side of the bay bear inscriptions from seafarers thanking the gods for their rescue. “Some of these are thousands of years old,” he explains.
“I bring a lot of archaeologists here.”
After we anchor at a half-dozen small beaches, including Varvarousa, Lia and Avlaki, the Syros-born and raised captain tells me that his island is lucky to still have such isolated beaches for boaters and swimmers to enjoy. “We have the perfect balance between visitors and local islanders,” he explains. “Unlike some other islands, we’re not overwhelmed by too many tourists.”
After I jump off Chavatzis’s boat in yet another secluded bay and paddle toward a nearly empty beach, I marvel at the crystal-clear waters that surround Syros. Everywhere I swim, I can see to the sand two metres below.
Back on board, I ask Chavatzis if more tourists coming to Syros would mean more money in his pocket. “For sure. But money isn’t everything. Just look at that pristine beach,” he says as he gestures toward the nearly empty arc of sand in the northwestern bay of Marmari. “Like almost everyone else on Syros, I want to see it stay the way it is. It’s our responsibility.”
It’s a sentiment that I have heard time and time again during my time on Syros. As we head back to Kini and the late afternoon sun starts to make its magical descent over the island of Kythnos to our west, I remember my friend George’s advice, “Syros is the real Greece. Explore it. You’ll thank me.”
The next time I talk to him, I will.
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