Lisbon – City Of Street Art
Lisbon is a city on Portugal's coast that skillfully combines modern ideas with old world appeal. Lisbon is a world center for street art although…
At dawn, Symi’s harbor seems to float in a golden haze. A mist lifts from the still water of Yialos bay, revealing pastel-painted houses clustered on the steep hillside above the port. “The morning sun rose… to reveal pastel-colored homes dotting the craggy hillside.” Bougainvillea blossoms spill from urns along the cobbled quay while fishermen and boat crews prepare their vessels for the day’s work. In summer, the narrow streets below a church bell echo with the tang of the sea breeze and the distant clip-clop of donkeys carrying loads of provisions up to the upper town. This postcard-perfect scene masks a rich, gritty legacy: for centuries Symi’s fortunes were woven from the sponge beds of the Aegean. Ships and workshops, wealth and war – the island’s character was shaped by the sponge trade, and its echoes still linger in stone, story, and soul.
Natural sea sponges were prized in the ancient world, and Greeks have harvested them since classical times. Ancient writers mentioned them; an early epic even notes bath sponges on a legendary hero’s ship. The Romans decorated their grand baths with Greek sponges for hygiene. Through time, the best sponges became world-famous commodities. By the early modern era, the islands of the Dodecanese – notably Symi, Chalki, and Kalymnos – led the world in sponge fishing and trade. Even under Ottoman rule, Symi paid tribute in sponges: local lore records that villagers had to deliver twelve thousand coarse and three thousand fine sponges annually to the Sultan. Early travelers who saw Symi’s sponges believed that they grew only in its waters.
Until the mid-19th century, sponge divers were “naked gymnasts” plunging without gear to the sea floor. One diving method was literally to “plow” the depths: a man clutching a 12–15 kg flat stone would sink rapidly to the bottom. Secured by rope to the boat, the stone gave weight to his body, and he could cut free the sponges by hand. These divers stayed down for minutes at a time – roughly three to five minutes on a breath, reaching depths of thirty meters or more. In lore they were fearless heroes of the abyss, confronting darkness, sharks, and rough currents to feed their families.
Symi’s golden age came in the 19th century. Profits from sponge exports turned the harbor town into a miniature metropolis: at its peak the island’s population swelled to over 20,000. Shipyards on the waterfront churned out the distinctive flat-bottom “Symi kaiki” boats used for sponging. The wealth financed grand architecture: bulbous bell towers and elegant mansions in warm creams, ochre, and salmon pink, their balconies of carved wood and stone overlooking the harbor. Many of the colorful neoclassical mansions date from that period. Today those houses form one of Symi’s signature sights, each quietly hinting at the sponge fortunes that built it.
A Symiot benefactor epitomized this wealth. A local shipping magnate amassed great riches from sponge and shipping ventures. With his patronage Symi erected its landmark Clock Tower and School, flanked by majestic neoclassical buildings. A stone fountain in front of the governor’s office still bears his family name. The town’s planning, too, reflects the prosperity: long, steep stairways were cut into the rock to connect upper town and harbor, while narrow streets near the port became lively promenades lined with cafés and shops.
In the early 1860s, Symi took a technological leap in diving. After years abroad as a marine engineer, a Symiot captain returned with a European-designed heavy diving suit. According to tradition, his wife famously donned the new suit and descended in the harbor to convince skeptical islanders of its safety. Thereafter more boats were fitted with hard helmets and air hoses, and free-diving declined. By the turn of the century, hundreds of Mediterranean sponge boats used such gear. Divers could now plunge twice as deep and stay longer, harvesting larger “sea silk” and “elephant ear” sponges found in deeper waters.
Yet these gains came with cost. The suit and heavy gear meant divers became craftsmen of the depths – but also gradually displaced a proud barefoot tradition. They suffered the bends and ear trauma that come with compressed air, accidents that were poorly understood at the time. In Symi, as elsewhere, accidents were tragically common, with dozens of diver fatalities and paralysis cases recorded in the early 1900s as financial pressure drove men to ever more dangerous depths.
An emblematic figure from this era was a famed Symiot diver born in 1878. By 1913 he was renowned for extreme feats. When a battleship ran aground nearby that summer, he was summoned. He went down 87 meters on a single breath – using only a stone, flippers, and a weight belt – and hooked the anchor chain. On his first attempt he brought the chain up, and before dawn on a second dive he refused rescue, surfacing nearly dead just as he cleared the water. His reward was a gold sovereign and, more importantly, permission to travel freely in the Aegean. Today a bronze statue of him still stands in Symi town, near the harbor, commemorating his bravery.
Meanwhile Symi’s community weathered geopolitical storms. The islanders joined the 1821 Revolution but, unlike mainland Greece, Symi remained under Ottoman rule until the early 20th century. In 1912 Italy occupied the Dodecanese, and during World War I the Italian authorities actually banned sponge diving around Symi. This prohibition proved a blow from which Symi never fully recovered. By WWI much of the fleet had shifted to Kalymnos, and Symi’s population quietly began to shrink. After World War II, synthetic sponges and new hygiene products further eroded demand for natural sponge. Although a handful of small boats still dive the local waters for sponges, the industry’s heyday has passed.
Today’s Symi still wears its sponge past on sleeve and skyline. On the quayside by the old fountain and Clock Tower, a little bronze monument honors “the fallen” – an inscription in Greek and English notes that many sponge divers lost their lives to drownings and gas embolisms. Near the harbor, a newly unveiled statue depicts the first woman to dive with a heavy suit – commemorating her 1863 dive that ushered in modern sponge technology. The three-meter bronze holds a torch aloft like the spirit of the island.
Walk the Marina at sunset and you’ll glimpse other vestiges: the ancient stone shipyards now become restaurants, yellow light warming old keels; faded wooden fishing boats moored beside sleek tourist yachts. In the narrow lanes where shadow and light dance, plaques and murals commemorate Symi’s sons and daughters of the sea. The richly carved armillary sphere (and nearby cannon) at the ruins of Panagia ton Straton near the castle remind visitors of Symi’s naval past. Upstairs above Gialos harbor, the old governor’s mansion (now a cultural center) is flanked by the 19th-century School and other grand mansions, all built by sponge fortunes.
Inside one of the neoclassical villas on Dekeri Street lies the Nautical Museum of Symi. Opened in 1983 and housed since 1990 in a restored mansion built on the site of the old shipyard, it is a trove of maritime lore. Visitors wander through rooms of model ships, navigational instruments and 19th-century paintings. A highlight is the dedicated sponge-diving exhibit: a hard-hat suit, heavy lead boots, and diving helmets sit beside baskets of natural sponges dredged from the nearby seabed. The museum label explains how divers plunged into the sea with nothing but stone and breath, and how the coming of synthetic sponges and environmental change has made the practice nearly obsolete. Upstairs, the balcony overlooks the harbor – a vivid reminder that this little isle once kept dozens of sponge boats.
Beyond the museum, sponge relics dot the town. At Dinos Sponge Center – a colorfully painted shop on the harbor near the old stone bridge – sponges still hang in nets to dry. The shop’s owner greets customers with facts about sponge biology: there are over 2,000 species in the Mediterranean, each with a distinct pore structure. Nearby, a tiny workshop still cuts and cures sponges by hand. Outside, vessels once used for diving now ferry tourists on daily sails: one sees familiar names carved on their bows, formerly sponge boats now filled with lounge chairs and sun umbrellas.
Symi’s daily rhythm still revolves around the sea. Before sunrise, the fishing boats slip quietly out of Yialos under mist; by day they return with crates of tiny fried shrimp and big nets of fish. Taverna terraces line the water’s edge, fragrant with grilled octopus and lemon-scented ouzo. Girls sit repairing nets in the shade; old men play backgammon by the outdoor cafés. The atmosphere is lazy but industrious – after all, a village whose ancestors hunted the depths still lives by the water’s bounty. In summer, boat taxis ply the short hop across the bay to Panormitis, the monastery on the far side. Visitors arrive on the hourly ferry from Rhodes, luggage in tow, and merge seamlessly into Symi’s morning bustle: some carrying foldable chairs for the beach, others with yoga mats or cameras.
By evening, fishermen smoke octopus or shrimp in small hearths on their decks; lights blink on in the hillside homes, and a church bell tolls in the upper town. Cocktail bars rise in the renovated mansion yards, but not all have replaced the old docks where sponges were sorted and salted. On warm nights the café tables spill into the cobbled road, and families linger long after dark – an endless loop of wine and biscuits, polite laughter under jasmine vines. Evenings bring crustaceans too: Symiako garidaki are legendary here, small as corn kernels and eaten whole. A casual Saturday on Symi might mean picking up sponges and olives from the market, grilling shrimps at home, then joining friends on a rooftop terrace to watch the sun go down behind Tilos across the straits.
Despite tourism, Symi retains a touch of the old life. Shops and restaurants will close for the afternoon nap (especially outside July–August), and many islanders rise with the sun. You will hear Greek and Italian spoken, since Italian visitors and expatriates are common. In July the Symi Festival enlivens the island with music, dance and even an outdoor film festival, but the rest of the summer locals still keep Greek Orthodox feasts and traditions. Observant visitors note that churchgoers dress modestly, and that the fiercest law is often noise curfew after midnight. Yet the Symiots are polite and hospitality-minded: an old sponge diver once pulled this writer onto his terrace with a wave, offering coffee and tales in equal measure.
Symi’s people, past and present, are full of character. One afternoon by the harbor, a retired sponge diver in his late 70s sits in a café with a mug of Greek coffee. At fifteen he began diving with the stone; he still bears scars on his chest from a time his aqualung hose tangled during a heavy dive. Today he cannot stand the thought of deep water, but he once wanted only to descend, to feel the pressure in his ears as light faded to green. “When we came up,” he recalls, “we brought spears for the big ones, blades for the rest. A day’s work was six or seven sponges. If someone blacked out underwater – that was just how it was.” He gestures over the calm bay: “I remember one summer morning, a boy never came back. We toasted him that night, many moons ago.”
On another corner stands a third-generation sponge shopkeeper and artisan. At sixty, with charcoal-streaked hair pulled back, she works a sponge through gloved hands and smiles at passers-by. “All this came from sea,” she says, pointing to shelves of sponge baskets. “There are sheep and goats, but sponges – they swim!” Inside, her walls are lined with small hooks holding carved coral and bits of sponge dyed pink and blue as kitschy souvenirs. “Greenfin. Capadokiko,” she names a few of the varieties. She learned to preserve and cut sponges from her father, and still ships craft-market orders worldwide. In winter she sells less; in summer she tells guests to rinse a sponge in baking soda to keep it soft.
Walking uphill toward the upper town, one meets the captain of the local ferry. A burly man with a laughing face, he grew up listening to his grandfather’s stories of life on the sponge boats. In his youth the ferry service was minimal, so few cars – most people walked the Kali Strata. He remembers when tourists first came in numbers in the 1980s: visitors wore swim trunks at dinner and squeezed onto the old Greek taxis. Now he navigates an orderly schedule of four daily round trips from Rhodes, double that in summer. He still steers the boat deftly around the bay’s rock formations, proudly showing newcomers the old sponge harbors and the silhouette of the monastery in the distance. “In winter,” he says, “a few old men will talk with me about how it was. But when the tourists come, everyone makes sure the island is clean.”
These characters illustrate Symi’s mix of old and new. Around town you’ll also find young artists and expats renovating ruins, a handful of foreigners living year-round, and a few families whose roots trace back through the sponge-fishing clans. Many still harvest tunny fish, sail repair, or run dive tours. One couple runs a weaving workshop making hand-braided sponge nets, continuing a tradition unchanged for generations. Others ferry day-trippers to hidden bays or serve local lemon pie to guests.
Beyond the town, Symi offers quiet coves and ancient sites. A short bus ride or 500 steps up the Kali Strata leads to the upper town’s little plaza and its stone-walled café, where islanders drink thick coffee at dawn. Further on is the ruins of an early Christian basilica at Nimborio, and out at sea lies the submerged stele of a 6th-century BCE tomb near Marathounta Bay – silent witnesses to Symi’s deep history.
Beaches here are mostly pebbly and often hidden from the road. The nearest is Nos Beach, just east of the harbor: a sunny strip with umbrellas, a taverna, and shallow turquoise water. By bus or hiking trail one can reach Pedi and its little beach in a quiet fishing cove. Walk a dirt path from Pedi to find Agios Nikolaos beach – a secluded semicircle of sand and shingle that can also be reached by small boat. Boat taxis from Yialos run all day to spots like Yonima or Marathounda, small bays popular for snorkeling amid rocky reefs.
The most famous excursion is to the Monastery on the island’s southwest flank. This 18th-century shrine to the Archangel Michael is the spiritual heart for many locals and sailors in the Aegean. Legend holds that Archangel Michael himself saved a Symiot fisherman in olden times, and the monastery has attracted pilgrims ever since. On feast days boats pack with worshipers who enjoy communal feasts, honey cakes, even free lodging from the friars. The monastery’s whitewashed buildings cluster around an imposing baroque bell-tower, built in the 1700s and still lit at night like a beacon. Inside the church visitors see gleaming silver icons and footed votive candles – offerings from captains and seafarers thanking the archangel for safe passage. It can be reached by private boat charter or a scheduled ferry from Symi Port. It’s a pilgrimage as much as a sight: one is expected to dress respectfully, light a candle or leave a gift as the monks request.
Symi is now a well-trodden destination, but its pace is gentle. The main port of Yialos serves both passengers and supplies. From Rhodes there are daily ferries to Symi, taking roughly 1 to 1.5 hours. These boats often start early (around 08:00) and arrive before 10:00. Symi’s port is deep-water and sheltered, so docking is smooth except in the windiest Meltemi days. If you approach by sea, note the town’s pastel tiers built into the cliffs: it’s a classic Greek-island entrance.
You can also reach Symi from Athens by ferry. Blue Star Ferries runs an overnight service from Piraeus about 2–4 times weekly in summer, and year-round in most seasons. The crossing is long (15–16 hours), so book a cabin if possible. Ferries also sail from Kos or Patmos via Rhodes, but schedules vary by season. (There is no airport on Symi; the closest one is Rhodes.)
Seasonally, the busiest months are July and August, when festival events fill the nights. Spring (May–June) and early fall (September) offer milder weather and fewer crowds. Winters are very quiet: many tavernas close, and the sea can be rough, though a few locals still dive for sponges or fish year-round. Temperatures reach the 30s °C in summer, but sea breezes usually keep things comfortable on the water. Even in mid-summer, afternoons often see a lull as everyone retreats indoors to escape the heat, reemerging by early evening.
Once on Symi, travelers mostly explore on foot or by local bus/taxi. The old town’s steep steps are charming but tiring, so pack good walking shoes. There are few cars in the town center – traffic is mostly motorbikes and the occasional tour bus. In Yialos you’ll find ATMs, small supermarkets, pharmacies, and shops (including many selling sponges and souvenirs). Credit cards are accepted at larger shops and hotels, but cash is king at tavernas and small vendors. Buses run from the port area up to the upper town and the monastery a few times a day – check schedules posted at the bus stop. Water taxis ferry people to the scattered beaches; they leave from the far east end of Yialos harbor when the small sign Taksi is lit.
Local customs are simple. Greetings go with a smile – a nod or “Kalimera” (good morning) is appreciated. Dress is casual, but modest attire is expected at churches. Nude sunbathing is illegal on Symi (and taboo near villages) – even at Nos Beach you’ll see only swimsuits. Greeks at Symi typically dine late (after 8 pm) and linger at table, so restaurants start to buzz only after sunset. Tipping is polite but not obligatory: rounding up the bill or leaving 5–10% at a nice taverna is customary. Above all, patience and friendliness go far: Symiots are hospitable but laid-back; flashiness or loud behavior will earn polite looks.
Beyond the Nautical Museum, a short walk uphill brings you to the hilltop village of Chorio. Its maze of stone alleys, shuttered shops, and quiet church squares looks frozen in time. At the small Folklore Museum you can see period costumes, agricultural tools, and photographs of Symians in Ottoman-era dress. Nearby is a ruined Byzantine wall and lovely views.
Back in town, wander the sponge-and-silk shop-lined waterfront (the stone bridge is a popular photo spot) and peek into the stalls selling local honey, bean pies, and lamps made of marine glass. Dinos Sponge Center on the quay and a few other artisan shops still pack real sponges for export – they make thoughtful souvenirs. (Pro tip: choose a dried sponge that feels somewhat firm; common Symi types are elephant ear, honeycomb, or soft silk sponges.) Next to the Clock Tower you’ll see a statue reminding residents how sponge money built much of Symi.
For memorable views, climb to the tavern near the summit of Hora, or to the old windmills by the edge of Chorio. Sunset from these heights turns Symi’s harbor to molten gold. The Byzantine castle crowns the highest point; its crumbling stonework and neglected chapel reward anyone willing to make the hike. From the castle you can see all the Dodecanese chain stretching away – including a faint silhouette of Rhodes on the horizon at dusk.
Nightlife on Symi is gentle. There are a few piano bars and beach bars for late cocktails. Many visitors simply stroll the waterfront at night, where tavern music and the chiming fountain meld into a soft lullaby. Ice cream stands do brisk business after dinner: try the local specialty almond-cookie gelato. If you’re here in early July, catch the outdoor concerts on the harbor or religious processions during Easter week when the town fills with incense and bougainvillea petals.
As you depart Symi by ferry or plane, take a moment to look back. Overhead the neo-Gothic bell tower of the Archangel Michael church stands out against the pastel houses. If the sunset is clear, you may just see a glint of marble from the shore or the bronze of a lone statue waving. These memories stay with many visitors: one leaves Symi not just charmed by its scenery, but moved by the weight of human history welded to this rocky island. In the words of a local Greek proverb, “Ship of the sea, with sand in the keel.” Symi has weathered many storms, plundered and reborn, and still it welcomes each new traveler with open shores and a generous heart, proud of its heritage yet modest in its welcome.
Symi has two main ports – Yialos and the monastery harbor. Yialos is the commercial harbor (where ferries dock) and the focus of lodging, restaurants, and shops. The island capital comprises two districts: Yialos and the upper town, connected by the Kali Strata stairs. You’ll need no passports for this EU Greek island, but do carry your ID. Greek is official, but English and Italian are widely understood in the tourism sector. With population now under 3,000 year-round, Symi is tiny – visit respectfully, leave only footprints (or shells) in its lanes, and take away memories of an island that truly grew from its sponges.
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