Chios,
one of the largest islands of the Aegean Sea, has an area of about
902 sq. km and a population of about 50,000.
Nature
beautiful villages with houses and buildings of traditional architecture
is one of the characteristics of the island. The region south
of the city, known as Kampos, is covered with citrus orchards
and is dotted by wonderful mansions, influenced mainly by the
architecture of Genoa.
 There
are many interesting sights in the capital of Chios. The outstanding
Archaeological Museum exhibits the island's history from the Stone
Age to the 19th century. The Library of Adamantios Korais is the
fourth largest library of Greece with 95,000 titles of enormous
historic value.
The
monastery of Nea Moní, founded by the Byzantine emperor
in 1049, is the most beautiful and important medieùal building
on the Greek islands. Its mosaics rank among the finest artistic
expressions of their age, and its setting, high in the mountains
west of the port, is no less memorable. There's a direct green
bus only on Wednesday mornings for mass; at other times you have
to take a local blue bus as far as Karyés (7km) and walk
or hitch an equal distance further.Once a community of 600 monks,
Néa Moní was pillaged during Turkish atrocities
in 1822 and most of its inmates put to the sword. Today the monastery,
with its giant refectory and ùaulted water cisterns, is
maintained by just two nuns and a few lay workers.
The dry valleys of southern Hios are home to the mastic bush,
whose resin - for centuries the base of paints and cosmetics -
was the source of the island's wealth before petrochemicals came
along.
The towns are the only settlements on Hios spared by the Turks
in 1822, and at the first opportunity it's worth jumping on a
bus headed for Pirgos or Mesta. Pirgos, 24km from the port, is
one of the most colourful of the villages, its houses elaborately
embossed with geometric patterns cut into the plaster and then
outlined with paint.
On
the northeast corner of the central platia, the fresco-embellished
Byzantine church of Ágioi Apostoli is tucked under an arcade
(erratic hours). Pirgos has a handful of rooms, a couple of tavernas,
and some good beaches nearby - the closest being Emboriï,
5km from Pirgï and seried by occasional buses in summer.
Mesta, 11km west of Pirgï, has a more sombre feel, with its
warren of stone houses doubling as the town's perimeter fortification.
From the central platia, dominated by a church, a bewildering
maze of cool, shaded lanes, provided with antiearthquake buttresses
and tunnels between the unpainted houses, wanders off in all directions.
The villages of northern Hios have suffered from the Turkish massacres
of the War of Independence, and many of the settlements are now
virtually deserted. For the short-term visitor,perhaps the best
target in this region is Volissos a large, half-inhabited village
guarded by a castle. Just over a kilometre away there's Limnia,
a lively and authentic little fishing village with two good tavernas,
plus a few more studios on the slopes inland.
One kilometre southeast, at Managros, begins an almost boundless
sand-and-pebble beach, while the more intimate cove of Lefkathia
is just a ten-minute walk over the headland north of the harbour.
Agia Markilla, 5km further north, stars in many of the local postcards:
a long, stunning beach fronting the monastery of the same name
- not particularly interesting but with a summer taverna and lodging
in the grounds.
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