Ninety minutes by ferry from Rhodes is an island that looks nothing like Rhodes. The houses are pastel neoclassical, the harbour is a half-circle of ochre and blue, and the day-trip arithmetic is unusually generous.
There is a particular pleasure in arriving by sea at Symi for the first time. The ferry from Rhodes rounds a headland after about eighty minutes and the town suddenly opens up in front of you — a horseshoe harbour rising in tiers of neoclassical houses painted in ochre, dusty blue, terracotta and cream. There are roughly five hundred of these houses; almost all of them are listed, and the colour palette is enforced by a building code that has been in place, with minor adjustments, since the 1970s.
Symi grew rich in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from sponge diving and shipbuilding. At its peak in 1880 the island had around twenty-two thousand inhabitants and was building merchant vessels for the entire eastern Aegean. The wealth shows in the architecture: full neoclassical facades, often three storeys, with pedimented windows and small wrought-iron balconies. After the 1923 abolition of the Ottoman Empire and the displacement of the sponge trade to North Africa, the island’s population collapsed. Today around 2,500 people live there year-round, and the architecture has survived almost entirely because there was no money to replace it during the lean decades.
The harbour, known as Gialos, is the lower town. Climb the Kali Strata — five hundred broad stone steps that lead up to the upper town, Horio — and the architecture gets quieter and older. Houses here are eighteenth century rather than nineteenth, with smaller windows and thicker walls. The view from the top is one of the great Aegean panoramas. The houses below ring the harbour like a Greek-island version of an Italian opera set.
Most day-trippers stay in Gialos. The boats from Rhodes Town arrive at around half past nine, the first restaurants open at ten, and there is a steady patrol of cafes along the seafront. The signature dish is the small Symi shrimp, a sweet local variety the size of a small finger, fried whole and eaten shell and all with a squeeze of lemon. The taverna Tholos at the northern end of the harbour and Manos at the southern do both equally well; Tholos has the better view of the boats coming in.
The other lunch option, and probably the better one, is to take a small caique from the harbour to the Monastery of Panormitis on the southern coast of the island, fifty minutes by sea, and eat at the tavernas there. Panormitis is the spiritual centre of the Dodecanese: a vast white monastery built around an icon of the Archangel Michael, dating in its current form from the eighteenth century. The Greek navy traditionally lays a wreath here on the Archangel’s feast day. The monastery itself is open without charge.
Symi has beaches, but they are small and reached on foot or by boat. Nos beach is a five-minute walk north of the harbour and is the easiest. Agia Marina, on the opposite side of the bay, requires a boat shuttle from the harbour (every twenty minutes in summer) but rewards with clearer water and a small white chapel on an islet just offshore that you can swim out to. For a serious swim, take the boat tour that leaves at eleven from Gialos and includes stops at Marathounda and Nanou — neither reachable by road, both close to empty in any season.
The day-trip arithmetic is unusually favourable. The morning ferry leaves Rhodes harbour around eight, arrives at Symi around half past nine, and the afternoon return ferry leaves Symi at half past four or five. That gives you seven full hours on the island, which is enough for the harbour walk, the climb up the Kali Strata, lunch, a swim and a long coffee on the seafront. Cars are unnecessary; the entire town is walkable, and the few roads on the island are mostly empty.
The journey itself is worth the price of the ticket. The route from Rhodes runs along the empty north-east coast of the larger island, then crosses the strait between Rhodes and Symi, which is rarely more than five kilometres wide. The Turkish coast is visible to the east the entire way. The ferries are unpretentious — plastic seats, a small bar — but the upper deck in good weather is one of the better hours of any week in the Dodecanese. From Lindos Comfy Suites the drive to Rhodes harbour is fifty kilometres; we recommend leaving by half past six.
