With its arid mountains, rocky coves and “cobalt-blue” seas, Patmos is “magnificent”. It is also among the most “serene” of the Greek islands, said John Gimlette in The Guardian, thanks in part to its extraordinary history.
According to Christian tradition, Saint John wrote the Book of Revelation here, after he was exiled to the island by the Romans in AD95, and in the 11th century, a Byzantine emperor bequeathed the island to monks. Their influence is still felt today. The main town, Chora, has dozens of chapels, but no corner-shops, no airport and little in the way of nightlife.
For many of us visitors, Patmos is the Greece we love, with its “wonky” lanes, “biddable” cats, and hiking paths wreathed in the “lingering” scent of “oleander and herbs”. The cave where St John is said to have heard the voice of God now contains a temple dedicated to him. And it is not the island’s only impressive holy site. Down on Petra Bay, there’s a rock for hermits, “rising up like a five-storey Swiss cheese, complete with cells and cisterns and 11th-century plumbing”.
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Still more majestic is the fortified Byzantine monastery that towers over Chora, commanding views of the sea in every direction, and of the Turkish coast 15 miles away. Inside, it’s a “labyrinth” of tunnels and caverns, and “a repository of the Holy and the Strange”, with treasures including the chains of St John, several skulls, a medieval flip-flop, and a jewelled crucifix donated by Catherine the Great.
Despite its ascetic air, Patmos is beloved of the “super rich”, whose “fancy” boats gather in Skala (the island’s only port) in “a great carnival of nautical bling”. There are also upmarket places to stay for those without yachts (I can recommend the Onar Patmos, a sort of “four-star farmhouse” next to a beach), and if you feel like a change, it’s easy to visit nearby islands.
Among these are Aspronisi, Arki, and Marathi, where fishermen with “gigantic moustaches” sit mending nets on the quayside “as if the last few centuries hadn’t really happened”.
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