Once is not enough to see and savor everything the third largest island in Greece has to offer you. Lesvos is not only large in area. It is grand in every way.
Aegira (dusky), Imerte (desirable), Lasia (densely wooded), Makaria (blessed). Over the course of time, all these names became linked to the fertile and truly coveted land - by countless conquerors and suitors - of Lesvos, Greece’s third-largest island, with eleven million olive trees and worldwide fame.
Lesvos. A place that calls you to discover it. If you surrender to its allure you will be richly rewarded as surprises come one after another. Picturesque seaside villages, but also mountain destinations that make you forget you are on an island. Richly varied landscapes, from the lush green of olives, pines, chestnuts and oaks to the lunar scenery of the western side. Imposing mansions with neoclassical, baroque, neo-Gothic, belle époque, Renaissance elements, and traditional stone-built houses and farmsteads.
The island of literature and the arts
Lesvos is not a place for the hurried visitor seeking the myth of frenetic nightlife and a rushed tour for a few hasty clicks of their camera. Lesvos - a starting point and terminus for civilizations spanning three millennia - has a rich natural environment, unique local products, and a close affinity with the arts, letters and folk tradition. The writer Asimakis Panselinos, a native son of Lesvos, put it in his own vivid way: “Here rises the hidden spring that nourishes the spirit of Mother Greece.” The traveler who bends to cool themselves at this spring will understand that Lesvos is not only large in area. It is great in everything.
Here, from the earliest antiquity, the arts and letters flourished. The two greatest lyric poets of Lesvos were Alcaeus and Sappho. Alcaeus, perhaps the first politicized poet, is better known for his love poetry. But if he was an artist-activist, Sappho was something more. Defying all the conventions of her time, which wanted women obedient and humble, she too engaged in politics, was temporarily exiled to Sicily, and returned to found in Mytilene a school of dance and music.
With such deep roots of intellectual tradition and independent thought, it is no surprise that this island gave birth to figures of letters and the arts such as Elytis, Myrivilis, Venezis, Panselinos, Iakovidis, Eleftheriadis, Theophilos.
Both mountain and sea
With two peaks almost 1000 meters high, those of Lepetymnos (968 m) and the Olympos just one meter lower, Lesvos’s topography will easily attract not only lovers of the sea, but also those who prefer, on a warm August day, to gaze at it from above. And if the mountains, forests and beaches of the island are the first temptation beckoning you closer, what will keep you longer than you planned are the people and their creations.
The peerless natural beauty of Molyvos, with its traditional houses of wood and stone, the prehistoric settlements, the castle of Mithymna (perhaps the best-preserved castle in Greece), the Roman aqueduct (one of the most important engineering works of the Mediterranean of that era), the Therma hot springs in the Gulf of Gera, the Limonos Monastery (which many call a miniature Mount Athos), are not only destinations you will find very hard to ignore. They are markers of the history of this island that knows how to offer inner peace and tranquility with the same ease that it can dispense worldly thrills for those who adore the good life, however each chooses to interpret it.
Some want to wear down the soles of their shoes on the wide and very well-marked network of trails of an island that has been included in the UNESCO Global Geoparks Network, to walk among endless olive groves, dense pine forests, or along the sheer rocks that lead to the Man Katsa waterfalls.
Others want to wander in the Petrified Forest of Sigri and travel twenty million years back, to the age of dinosaurs and the gigantic vegetation that homo sapiens - with its brief life of 200,000 years - never beheld directly yet has never ceased to be enchanted by their story.
Still others want to see up close the olive harvest and olive oil production in Gera, a symbol of beauty for the island. Or to stage nature’s gentlest ambush, to watch through their binoculars and capture with their cameras the rare birds that find refuge in Lesvos’s wetlands.
A gastronomic paradise
Everyone, however, will discover why the saying that happiness inevitably passes through the stomach finds its full meaning in this place. The anise from Lisvori and the know-how of generations in producing ouzo have bestowed on Lesvos worldwide recognition and countless international distinctions.
Lesvos is a true gastronomic paradise. With one of the finest olive oils in Greece, with local meats of high quality, with renowned cheeses such as ladotyri or kefalaki, with fragrant thyme honey and, of course, the famous Kalloni sardines, one would need iron will to resist. And, between us, one shouldn’t. Holiday indulgences are what give meaning to the discipline of all the rest of the year. And if one sins for Lesvos’s sake, Lesvos will honor the sacrifice. Because, as a great Greek interwar chef once said about the island’s local products and its people: “Elsewhere we cook for nourishment. Here, though, everyone cooks for pleasure”.
Lesvos of two images
It sounds paradoxical, but all this beauty that surrounds you on the island was the result of a prehistoric chaotic event. The fearsome eruption of the volcano that flooded the island with lava and dramatically changed its morphology was also the beginning of the creation of all the natural abundance that makes this place stand out, long before humans appeared on the scene. Five thermal healing springs, the volcanic landscape with the petrified forest on the western side and the fertile southeastern coast create Lesvos of two images. From the violence of chaos to the refinement of harmony. In Lesvos, nature is the canvas, the brush and the colors all at once. People simply never forgot how to listen to it and follow it...
