Lesbos

Lesbos is the third-largest Greek island and far bigger than first-time visitors expect. The drive from Mytilene on the south-eastern coast to Molyvos castle in the north takes around 90 minutes, and the Petrified Forest on the western edge is 2.5 hours from Mytilene. Distances matter here in a way they do not on the smaller islands. Choose one base or split the trip in two: Mytilene for the city, the museums and the food; Molyvos for the castle and the northern coast.

Sappho was born on Lesbos in the seventh century BC and wrote her lyric poetry in the island’s Aeolic Greek; only fragments survived antiquity. The folk painter Theophilos Hatzimichalis was born in Vareia, near Mytilene, in the nineteenth century. For most of his life he painted on coffee-house walls and wooden panels in return for room and board. The Theophilos Museum in Vareia is the cultural reason to spend at least one night in the south. So is the Teriade Museum next door, which holds the collection of Picasso, Matisse and Chagall illustrations gathered by the art editor Teriade, who was born on Lesbos.

The Petrified Forest on the western coast, now a UNESCO Global Geopark, preserves a subtropical woodland buried in volcanic ash about 20 million years ago. Whole trunks have turned to coloured stone where they stood. Nearby, the saltwater lagoon at Kalloni draws flamingos in spring and is one of the more important sites for migrating birds in the eastern Mediterranean.

The island has something like 11 million olive trees. The oil is widely sold but rarely bottled with the care it deserves. Plomari, on the southern coast, is the centre of Greek ouzo production, and the Barbayanni distillery runs tours. The thermal springs at Eftalou, on the northern coast above Molyvos, are housed in a small domed bathhouse from the Ottoman era and are worth an evening soak.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Mytilene International Airport “Odysseas Elytis” (MJT) lies 8 kilometres south of the city and opens 6am to 11pm; Aegean flies all year to Athens and Thessaloniki, and Sky Express to Athens, Thessaloniki, Chios, Lemnos and Samos, with a seasonal Heraklion service from May. By sea, the Blue Star Patmos runs the line from Piraeus through Chios to Mytilene that opened in July 2012, and Hellenic Seaways calls at Mytilene on Tuesday and Friday evenings from Piraeus.

  2. The address

    Pyrgos of Mytilene, on Eleftheriou Venizelou in the Sourada quarter, is a Second Empire mansion of 1916 by Ignatios Vafiadis, run as a 12-room hotel since August 1999 and open all year; Eleftherios Venizelos stayed here. For the north, the Olive Press Hotel at Molyvos occupies a converted olive-oil factory on the seafront, its tall chimney still on the beach under the castle.

  3. The Vareia museums

    In Vareia, 3.5 kilometres south of Mytilene, two museums stand side by side among olive trees. The Theophilos Museum, founded in 1964, holds 86 panels by the folk painter from the last six years of his life. The Teriade Museum next door, opened in August 1979, holds the published work of Stratis Eleftheriades: the grands livres (large illustrated books), the run of Verve magazine, and Chagall, Picasso, Matisse and Léger.

  4. The Petrified Forest

    Lesvos Island became a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2015: 163,600 hectares, with a subtropical forest buried in volcanic ash roughly 20 million years ago and turned to coloured stone where it stood. The Natural History Museum at Sigri, founded in 1994 and directed by Nikolaos Zouros, sells the combined ticket. The standing trunk in Plaka Park is 13.7 metres round, and Nissiopi, the marine fossil park, is reached by glass-bottom boat.

  5. The Kalloni wetland

    The Kalloni saltpans and the gulf wetlands around Skala Kallonis are the main birdwatching site of the eastern Aegean. Six wooden hides ring the saltpans, Messa, the Tsiknias river mouth and Ennia Kamares, with flamingo, glossy ibis and ruddy shelduck, and Krüper’s nuthatch in the pines above. Spring migration, through April and the first week of May, is the considered window, and the Kalloni Environmental Information Center holds the species list and access to the hides.

  6. Barbayanni

    The Varvayannis house has distilled ouzo in Plomari since 1858, and the founding still, made in Constantinople and brought to Lesvos that year, is the centrepiece of its museum at the 1st kilometre of the road from Plomari to Mytilene. The museum runs free 15-minute tours, Monday to Friday 9.30am to 3.30pm and Saturdays to 1.30pm. Park at the gate; the bottling hall and the original copper still are next door.

  7. The kolovi

    Eirini Plomariou is the producer to ask for: Nikos and Myrta Kalampoka have farmed organic Kolovi olives in the mountain groves above Plomari since 1996, picking the fruit by hand before it is fully ripe and pressing it the same day. The oil carries the PGI Mytilini label (protected geographical indication), and tastings are by arrangement at the family farm.

  8. Eftalou

    Eftalou is a 17th-century domed Ottoman bathhouse 3.5 kilometres east of Molyvos, fed by hot springs at 46.5°C, the most radioactive of the island’s thermal waters, with a newer block of seven private baths beside the original. The public bath is mixed, one of the few of its kind in Greece, and the season runs from 15 June to 15 November. The evening soak under the dome is the better hour.

  9. Mouria tou Myrivili

    At Skala Sykamineas on the north coast, the small whitewashed chapel of Panagia tis Gorgona stands at the harbour mouth on a rock left by a Lepetymnos lava flow that reached the sea 18 million years ago. The novelist Stratis Myrivilis, born in Sykamia in 1890, took the fresco of the mermaid Virgin as the title of his 1949 novel. At the tables below, fresh Kalloni sardine, salt-cured within 24 hours, comes with the Plomari ouzo.

  10. Mantamados

    The Monastery of the Pammegistoi Taxiarches at Mantamados, in the north-east of the island 36 kilometres from Mytilene, holds one of the rare relief icons in the Orthodox world. It shows the Archangel Michael, made in wax and the blood-soaked earth of the murdered monks, and stands inside the three-aisled basilica built in 1879. The icon is the reason the monastery draws the devout from across the island.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Mytilene

    Mytilene, the capital, has the main harbour on the southeast edge of the island, under the great castle that the Genoese renovated in 1373 and held until the Ottoman conquest of 1462. The ancient city had two harbours, once linked by a channel 700 metres long through the town. A yacht lies below the walls in the working port of Lesbos, among the ferries, the commercial shipping and the new marina.

  2. Molyvos

    Molyvos, also called Mithymna, rises up the north coast in tiers of stone to the Genoese fortress on its hill, and the agora, the old market street, winds up to the castle past old shops and cafés. Below, the little fishing harbour holds the caïques, with tavernas at the water. A yacht lies off the town, with the fortress above it and the Anatolian coast across the strait.

  3. Plomari

    Plomari, on the south coast below Mount Olympos, is the only real coastal town in the south of the island and the second largest on Lesbos. It is a port with a commercial and maritime history and the home of the island’s ouzo. A yacht lies off the town, with the distilleries behind it and the resort of Agios Isidoros along the shore to the east.

  4. Sigri

    Sigri, at the far western tip of the island, is a small fishing village whose eighteenth-century Ottoman fort looks down on the bay, and whose name is a Venetian word for “safe”. The long island of Nissiopi lies across the mouth of the bay and closes the harbour. A yacht lies at this quiet end of Lesbos, which few tourists reach, with the petrified forest of the west behind.

Mythology

  1. Arion

    Herodotus says Arion came from Methymna, the city in northern Lesbos now called Molyvos. He says the people of Lesbos agreed with the Corinthians on the story of the dolphin that carried Arion to Tainaron.

  2. Orpheus

    Three ancient accounts send the head of Orpheus to Lesbos after the women of Thrace kill him. Phanocles has the sea carry it there still tied to the lyre; Lucian has it buried at a shrine of Dionysus and the lyre kept in a temple of Apollo; and Philostratus has an oracle grow up at the buried head, drawing worshippers from Delphi and Clarus until Apollo himself orders it to fall silent.

  3. Sappho

    Strabo names Sappho among the notable people of Mytilene and makes her a contemporary of Alcaeus. Lesbos is certain, but the surviving evidence does not fix a more exact birthplace on the island.