How amazing! Gialos, the well-protected port of Symi, welcomes you as a well-made theater setting. Even though it looks like a painting, dreamy, the view that you see is completely true, as the ship enters its innards. Nobility, elegance and harmony compose the image. Every corner, every alley, the whole place an attraction, invites you to discover it! Its two-storey neoclassical buildings that start from Gialos stand proudly and, built amphitheatrically, climb to the top, in Chora, gazing arrogantly at the blue of the Aegean, while their lively multicolor is playfully reflected in its crystal clear waters. They tell the story of the place and its people, the aptitude of the locals to the sea, their mastery in sponge fishing, shipbuilding, wood carving and trade.

Kali Strata, the main commercial axis that once connected the upper village with the port, invites you to walk its 500 stone steps. Every now and then, a “halato”, as the dilapidated abandoned houses are called, is wounded by the ensuing withering, the forced migration of the inhabitants in search of a better tomorrow and the devastation caused by World War II. And on every plateau, on every hill of the wild rocky landscape, a church emerges, a witness to the great faith of the people and their need to seek protection from the dangers of the sea.

However, the greatest miraculous power is attributed to the patron saint of Symi and protector of the sailors, Michael Archangel, to whom the Monastery of Panormitis, in the south of the island, is dedicated. A masterpiece of ecclesiastical architecture of the 18th century, but also one of the most important pilgrimages of Greek Orthodoxy, accompanied by many legends and miraculous stories, as evidenced by the hundreds of tributes that the sea mysteriously brings from every corner of the world along with the wishes of the faithful who send them.

In Symi, the mind tries to capture what the eye sees and the heart feels. Let the look go astray and the heart fall in love!