Symi tours are host-led trips on Symi, a small mountainous island north of Rhodes. The sections look at the hill town of Ano Symi and the Panormitis Monastery. That monastery honours the Archangel Michael. They also cover the 1944 raid, King Nireus, the Battle of Syme and the islet of Seskli. Related pages cover the Dodecanese islands and Greece and Turkey tours. Trips in other regions appear on the Greece tours page.
Bookings made through the GetYourGuide widgets on this page earn Classical Greece Tours a commission, at no extra cost to the traveller.
What are Symi tours?
Symi tours pair a host with a mountainous island of 58.1 square kilometres. Its main town, on the north-east coast, carries the same name as the island. Mountainous describes land crowded with steep hills and high peaks.
Ano Symi sits on a hillside slope of the island behind Symi tours. For years its people largely left it, but it has seen a revival lately. A revival means fresh life after a spell of decline. A stone stairway of 500 steps, the Kali Strata, climbs to it. Kali Strata means good way in Greek.
The hill town behind Symi tours holds churches from the Byzantine era, among them Aghios Georgios and Metamorfosis. The Byzantine era was the rule of the eastern Roman emperors. An archaeological museum stands there too. So does the Kastro, the stronghold of the Knights of Saint John. These knights formed a religious order of soldiers in medieval times.
After renovation, the Historical Museum of Symi opened again in late 2020. Its collections hold artefacts found by Michael and Niketas Chaviaras, local collectors. Artefacts are items crafted by human hands in earlier times. Visitors to the island of Symi tours have spurred the restoration of homes. A large share had been destroyed in the Second World War.
- Marina: Gialos, the island’s port, draws sailors as a popular marina for their boats.
- Law: By law, every restoration must follow the rules of the culture ministry’s Archaeological Service.
- Residents: Symi is the permanent home of roughly 120 residents who are not Greek, about 50 of them British.
Symi has become popular with visitors from abroad, above all British, French and Italians. On the island behind Symi tours, residents from other EU states can vote in local elections. The European Union joins member countries across Europe.
What does the Panormitis Monastery add to Symi tours?
Symi tours share an island with the Panormitis Monastery of the Archangel Michael. Saint Michael’s line, a long chain of holy sites, passes through it. A monastery is a religious community house under one rule. An archangel is a chief angel.
The line behind Symi tours runs straight across Europe and the Holy Land through monasteries and churches. Eight of them honour the Archangel Michael. The Holy Land is the region of the Bible stories, around modern Israel. In Greece, other notable sites on the line belong to ancient temples of Apollo, a Greek god.
In 1967 the French scholar Jean Richer published a book on alignments of ancient Greek temples. An alignment is a set of places lying on one straight line. In 1977 his brother Julian extended the line to the west and east. He gave it the name St Michael-Apollo axis. An axis here means a long straight line.
Legend says the line marks the blow Saint Michael struck when he cast the Devil into Hell. Such a legend is a traditional tale, not proven history. Michael also bears the title Taxiarch, a Greek word for a military commander. Unlike the monastery behind Symi tours, Mount Carmel and Stella Maris have no known link with the archangel.
- End point: By convention, the line stops in Israel, at a monastery on Mount Carmel named Stella Maris.
- Feast: Eastern Orthodox churches keep the main feast of Michael on 8 November each year.
- 1944: In 1944, German troops were driven from the monastery and gave up at a seaside headland.
Symi tours fall within a visitor season stretching from Easter to Panormitis Day, early in November. On 8 November the church honours Michael together with the Bodiless Powers, its name for the angels. Easter is the spring feast of the Resurrection.
What do travellers ask about Symi tours, and what are the answers?
Symi tours concern an island whose story before the 14th century is little known. In Homer’s Iliad, the island belongs to Nireus, its king. The Iliad, an epic, tells of the Greek war against Troy. Epic poems recount the deeds of heroes at length.
Before Symi tours, how did the 1944 raid on the island unfold?
The raiders came from the Special Boat Squadron, formed in 1943, and the Greek Sacred Band. Both units trained together at Haifa for work in the Aegean. In the raid, British troops seized a high point called Molo Point with ease. Air attacks by the Luftwaffe, the German air force, did little harm.
For Symi tours, who was Nireus in the Homeric story?
Homer calls Nireus the fairest man who came beneath Ilion. Ilion is another name for Troy. Nireus did not stand out for bodily strength, and Eurypylus or Aeneas killed him. In the version of the writer John Tzetzes, he survived the war. He settled near Mount Lakmynion and the River Aias.
Near Symi tours, what led up to the Battle of Syme in 411 BC?
In 411 BC, Sparta made an alliance with Persia. An alliance binds two powers to act as partners. The Spartan admiral Astyochus was ordered to Cnidus to meet twenty-seven ships from Caunus. The Athenian commander Charminus learned of the Spartan approach from the Melians, the people of Melos.
Before Symi tours, what is known about the islet of Seskli?
Seskli, also known as Sesklio, Sesklo or Sesklia, is a small Greek island near Symi. Nobody lives there. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder called it Scutlusa. Its soil has yielded archaeological finds from a long range of historical periods. Archaeologists learn about earlier ages by digging up buried remains.