Symi

Symi is mostly seen by day-trippers who arrive on the morning hydrofoil from Rhodes and are gone by four. They get the famous arrival photograph and they miss the part that matters. The afternoon emptying-out is when Symi becomes itself, the harbour goes quiet, and the cafe terraces along Gialos open up. Stay one night at minimum, two if you can.

The harbour is the architectural set-piece of the Dodecanese: neoclassical mansions in tiers of ochre, terracotta, and faded blue around a single semicircular bay. In the nineteenth century, Symiot families built fortunes on shipbuilding and sponge-diving and spent them on these houses. The yards turned out the fastest small craft in the eastern Aegean. The divers descended deeper than was wise in canvas suits and brass helmets, examples of which can still be seen in the small Maritime Museum. The trade collapsed in the early twentieth century, the families left, and the mansions remained.

The Kali Strata, a broad stone staircase of around five hundred steps, climbs from Gialos to the upper village of Chorio. Ten minutes down, twenty back up. Do it once at sunset, when the light hits the western façades and the older residents are out on their stoops. On 8 May 1945 the document of surrender that ended the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese was signed in a building on the Gialos waterfront, an event marked by a small plaque most visitors miss.

Panormitis monastery, on a sheltered bay at the southern tip of the island, is reached by road or by water. Pilgrims come for the icon of the Archangel Michael, and the baroque bell tower above the bay is a useful landmark for sailors. Symi has only short pebble beaches, and most swimming is reached by water taxi from Gialos. Bring sandals.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    No airport on the island. The fast catamarans of Dodekanisos Seaways — the HSC Dodekanisos Pride and the F/B Panagia Skiadeni — run the route from Rhodes in 45 to 80 minutes, with three sailings daily from May through October. Helistar handles helicopter transfer from Rhodes Diagoras (RHO), where Signature Aviation provides the FBO for private jets.

  2. The address

    1900 Hotel, on the Gialos waterfront — the restored mansion of Captain Fotis Mastoridis, who in 1862 brought the first autonomous diving suit to Greece from the West Indies. Architect Dimitris Zografos and his partner Vicky led the restoration. Four suites only, numbered 1901 through 1904. The address is the building itself rather than a room within it.

  3. Agora

    The Old Markets, a listed national monument on the lower Kali Strata, opened the rooftop Agora restaurant in 2023. Chef Chris Sidiropoulos was Chef de Cuisine at Hytra in Athens; before that, Midsummer House at Cambridge under Daniel Clifford, Hide and The Ritz at London under John Williams. The hotel itself runs ten rooms across two buildings — the Ancient Agora and the Captain's Mansion — open 1 May through 31 October.

  4. Mylopetra

    A stone-arched dining room set back one street from the Gialos quay, with a tomb dated to around 50 BC visible through thick glass under the floor. The body was found in a seated position — a posture taken on the island as a marker of high standing — and the finds are now in the Archaeological Museum at Rhodes. Mediterranean kitchen of measured ambition, dinner served in the courtyard from June. The room is the quiet alternative to Agora when an eleven-course evening is more than the night wants.

  5. The Symi shrimp

    Simiako garidaki — a tiny crimson shrimp 4 to 5 centimetres long, found in the stony shallows around the island, fried whole in olive oil with sea salt and lemon, eaten shell and all. Tholos sits at the far end of Harani, past the working shipyard and short of the town beach at Nos. Family-run, harbourside; the monk's salad of lentils and bulgur is the side to order, the octopus the second plate.

  6. Roukouniotis

    The oldest monastery on the island, 4 kilometres west of Chorio, raised by the Knights of Saint John in the 14th century over the ruins of a 5th-century foundation, dedicated to Michael Taxiarchis. The katholikon is two churches stacked — an 18th-century upper temple set above the older lower one, whose walls hold late-Byzantine frescoes. A hundred-year-old cypress stands outside the wall. Quieter than Panormitis on every day of the year.

  7. Dysalonas

    Agios Georgios at Dysalonas is the cove with no road in — reached only by your own tender or the taxi-boats that leave Gialos through the season. A wall of cliff rises 300 metres behind the pebbles and throws shade across the water after noon; there is nothing on the beach, so the villa packs the day. The cliff is the reason to come and the reason to bring everything.

  8. The Chatziagapitos complex

    The Archaeological and Folklore Museum of Symi sits in the Agios Athanasios neighbourhood of Chorio across three levels — eight buildings around the 18th-century Hatziagapitos mansion (built to a Venetian design for a merchant who served as consul of Greece and Spain) and the adjacent Farmakidis House. Open daily except Tuesday, 08:30 to 15:30. The collections trace shipbuilding, sponge-fishing, trade, and domestic life across the floors above the courtyards.

  9. Panormitis

    The Monastery of the Archangel Michael at Panormitis, on a sheltered bay at the southern tip, was rebuilt in the mid-18th century and carries what is taken locally to be the largest baroque bell tower in the world, raised in 1911. The single-aisle church holds a silver-plated icon of the Archangel two metres tall; the inner courtyard is laid in pebble mosaic. Two small museums sit within the walls — one of ecclesiastical art, the other of island folk culture. Reached by road or by water.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Gialos

    Gialos is the natural port of Symi, and the settlement is built amphitheatrically around it. The port authority of record is the Municipal Port Fund of the South Dodecanese, seated at Rhodes, which administers the island’s two ports — Gialos and Pedi Bay — along with those of Rhodes, Karpathos, Kasos, Tilos, Halki and Kastellorizo. Ashore from the stern is the whole of the lower town.

  2. Pedi

    Pedi Bay is the second of the island’s two ports, and the one with a marina in it: places and mooring balls are reserved in advance through the marina’s own platform rather than taken on arrival. The village at its head is a fishing settlement in a picturesque cove east of Chorio, and the foundations of an early Christian basilica lie on the shore beside it.

  3. Nimborios

    Nimborios is the island’s second natural harbour after Gialos, and counted among the first ports Symi ever used — the ancient town of King Nireas, whose houses now stand almost on the beach. The road from Gialos reaches part of the way and then gives out, and the rest is finished on foot from Harani. A vessel lying here has the north coast largely to itself.

  4. Panormitis

    Panormitis is a landfall in its own right: the bay on the island’s south-western side is a port of call for Dodekanisos Seaways, which names Panormitis of Symi separately from Symi itself among its Dodecanese destinations. The Monastery of the Archangel Michael stands at the head of the water among cypress and pine; caiques come down from Gialos, and the road arrives from behind.

  5. Nanou

    Nanou is the day anchorage the island keeps for vessels: the Municipality states plainly that access is only by boat, which is the whole of its character. Marathounda, by contrast, is among the few Symi beaches a car can reach, and busier for it. Taxi boats run out of Gialos and out of Pedi, the convenient starting point for the rest of the coast; a tender makes the same water private.

  6. The agent

    Symi Tours has worked the Gialos waterfront since 1973, the oldest agency on the island and the one a visiting yacht deals through: berth reservations and port coordination, inward and outward customs formalities at the Symi Port Authority, bunkering, provisioning, transfers for guests and crew. The Port Authority keeps its own office on the island. Nothing at Symi is arranged on arrival that was not arranged before it.