The Greek Islands
The Greek Islands |
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Patmos is a very nice island to visit.
It's very small, and it doesn't get many visitors.
By the way, all the pictures on this page are of relatively low quality, as they are from visits before I bought a digital camera. These are the result of scanning prints from pictures taken with a US$ 10 camera. The other pages all have much better pictures!
Who knows, maybe you will have some apocalyptic visions on Patmos. You wouldn't be the first visitor to do so. This is where The Revelation of Saint John the Divine was written.
I, John, your brother and companion in
the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance
that are ours in Jesus,
was on the island of Patmos because of the
word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard
behind me a loud voice like a trumpet,
which said: "Write on a scroll what you see and send
it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna,
Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea."
I turned around to see the voice that was speaking
to me.
And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands,
and among the lampstands was someone "like a son of
man," dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and
with a golden sash around his chest.
His head and hair were white like wool, as white as
snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.
His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and
his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.
In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his
mouth came a sharp double-edged sword.
His face was like the sun shining in all its
brilliance.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.
Then he placed his right hand on me and said:
"Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.
I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am
alive for ever and ever!
And I hold the keys of death and Hades.
Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now
and what will take place later.
The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my
right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this:
The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches,
and the seven lampstands are the seven churches."
— The Revelation of Saint John the Divine, Chapter 1
The map at right shows Patmos between the red markers, just south of Samos and not too far from the Turkish coast. The map below at left covers a small area in more detail.
Patmos in relation to the other Dodecanese Islands. From a U.S. military topographic map in the Perry Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas.
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Paoli United Methodist Church |
| paoli-umc.com | |
A number of early Christian basilicas were built on Patmos, including a large one built about 300-350 in honor of Saint John of Patmos.
However, Arab raids in the 6th through 9th centuries destroyed the large basilicas and very nearly ended the Christian settlement of the island.
The Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos gave the church complete authority over the island, and a monastery started construction in 1101. The population was later swelled by Byzantine refugees fleeing the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the island came under Ottoman control. The control was remote and the island was given a great deal of autonomy.
The Turco-Italian war in 1912 led to Italian occupation of all the Dodecanese, lasting until 1943 when Nazi Germany took control of Patmos. The Germans left in 1945 and Patmos was an autonomous island until joining Greece in 1948.
The next destination here, Rhodes, is the large and easternmost Greek island, just south of the Turkish port of Marmaris.
Rhodes is very nice at night in October, when the tourists are gone and the walled old city is like something out of an Errol Flynn movie. In the daytime when the cruise ships are in port, or apparently most anytime in the high season (July and August), it can get unpleasantly crowded.
At left you see the site of the Colossus of Rhodes, one of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to have been in today's Greece. Fanciful representations depict it as straddling the harbor opening. Really it was a tall statue that stood on one side or the other, where you now find these two columns holding stags.
It only stood for 56 years until it collapsed in the 226 BC earthquake. The wreckage laid on the ground for over 800 years, and even in that state it was impressive enough that people traveled to see it. According to Theophanes the Confessor (c.759-818), the Arab force that captured Rhodes in 654 sold the wreckage to "a Jewish merchant of Edessa", who had the statue broken up and the bronze scrap hauled to his home on 900 camels. However, Theophanes is the only source of this story. It is now thought that the wreckage was gone long before the Arab force's arrival, and the story was meant as a metaphor for Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the destruction of a great statue [see Daniel 2] and would have clearly (to Theophanes' readership of 8th century monks) been evidence of the coming apocalypse. [see "The Arabs and the Colossus", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3rd ser., L.I. Conrad, July 1996, pp 165-187]
There is a nice hostel, really more of a domatia or pension, in the old city. At the right is the exterior view, and below you see its courtyard.
Go through one of the immense gates in the old city walls from the dock, turn right (west). If the first square with a fountain you encounter isn't Plateia Hippocrates, it will be the next one in the same direction. Keep going that way on Soukratous, which will go up a gentle slope. About a hundred meters from that fountain, an old mosque stands out over the left half of the street. Turn left under that overhang, the hostel is at 12 Ergiou, and the entrance will be a door down a side alley to your right. Their phone is +30-22410-30491.
There are plenty of atmospheric back streets and alleys for you to wander through the old walled city.
The Knights of Saint John ruled Rhodes from 1309 until they were driven out by the Ottomans in 1522.
This is the Avenue of the Knights, or the Street of the Seven Tongues. The knights were divided into "tongues" based on their place or origin and thus language — England, France, Germany, Italy, Aragon, Auvergne, and Provence. The Grand Master of the Knights lived in the palace, and each tongue was supervised by a bailiff and was responsible for the defense of a section of the bastion.
Here are some views of Naxos. It's yet another beautiful island.
Naxos, at 429 km2, is the largest island in the Cyclades group. The largest town is simply known as Hora, as usual. It has a little over 6,500 residents.
An explanation is in order: χωρα or hora is Greek for "town" or "municipality". The main town of most of the islands is called "Hora". We might as well say that each island has a main town simply referred to as "The Town".
Mount Zas, the highest point on Naxos, is also the highest point in the Cyclades. It is tall and wide enough to catch some clouds and draw some more rain to the island. This has led to much greater than usual agricultural activity in vegetables, fruits, and even cattle. The Greeks know Naxos as a source of good potatoes. Naxos is more self sufficient than other islands.
Greek mythology says that Zeus was raised in a cave on the highest mountain — Mount Zas referring to Zeus.
Homer refers to Dia, a sacred island with name literally meaning "of the Goddess". The name Dia was generally applied to small islands close to larger islands, and even to Naxos itself.
There was a legend that before the Trojan War, in what is called the Heroic Age, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on Crete. This was after Ariadne had helped Theseus kill the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth. This was not very gallant of Thesus. Dionysius, the protector of Naxos and the god of wine, fell in love with her.
In more conventional history, the Revolt of Naxos led to the war between Greece and Persia. Persian forces attacked Naxos in 502 BC. The attack was unsuccessful, but it led to the Ionian Revolt, a rebellion of several prominent Greeks against the Persian Empire pressing against Ionia at the time, and that led in turn to the war between Greece and Persia.
Some classic era ruins remain to be seen today. At right is a view through an ancient arch toward Hora.
Naxos, Paros, and the narrow channel separating them. From a U.S. military topographic map in the Perry Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas.
In 1207 AD, after the Fourth Crusade, a Venetian adventurer named Marco Sanudo took advantage of the Venetian influence at Constantinople. He captured first Naxos and then the rest of the Cyclades. This established the Duchy of the Archipelago, which controlled the Cyclades through 1566, with Venetian control of some scattered Aegean islands through 1714.
The Ottoman Empire held nominal control over Naxos from 1566 through 1821, although it remained effectively controlled by the Venetians as the Ottomans were satisfied by collecting taxes from the island. The islands revolted in 1821 as part of the Greek War of Independence and became part of the Greek state in 1832.
If you are traveling between the Greek islands and Turkey, you are likely to pass through Samos.
The narrow channel separating Samos from the Turkish mainland. The narrow harbor opening from the north coast to Vathi is almost completely missing here! But as my pictures show, Vathi is a port. From a U.S. military topographic map in the Perry Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas.
A small ferry links Samos with the Turkish port of Kusadaşı every day during the high seaon. It is a short dolmuş ride from Kusadaşı to Selçuk and the ancient city of Ephesus.
Some times of the year there is a single ferry each day, going from Turkey to Greece early in the morning and returning to Turkey in the late afternoon. Other times there is one each direction in both morning and afternoon. Service drops to maybe twice a week during the winter months.
The island's capital of Vathy, also called Samos, is a large town by island standards. But then Samos is a fairly large island.
Samos is a transport hub of the north-eastern Aegean, with ferries west to Piraeus, south to the Dodecanese islands, and southwest to the Cyclades. Olympic Airways also links Samos with Athens several times a day in high season.
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Click here for details on a free Greek language course.
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| © Bob Cromwell May 2012. Created with /bin/vi and ImageMagick, hosted on OpenBSD with Apache. Root password available here, privacy policy here. |
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