Culture
Get lost in Mesta
Wander the vaulted stone lanes of the fortress village until you find the square, then stay for dinner under the church as the lanes cool down.
Mesta
Chios · Things to do
Things to do in Chios
Beaches, trails, festivals, food and wine: the experiences that make this island its own.
Experiences
Our favourite things to do
Ideas for every kind of day, from a lazy swim to a full-day hike.
Nature
Watch the mastic harvest
From late July to September the farmers scrape the bark of the lentisk trees and gather the tears of resin from the white earth below. Visit the Mastic Museum, then taste mastic sweets and liqueur in the villages.
The mastic villages
Culture
Cycle the lanes of Kampos
Ride or walk the narrow lanes between the high stone walls of the citrus estates, peeking through old gates at mansions, cisterns and waterwheels. Best in April, when the orange blossom is out.
Kampos
Beach
Swim at Mavra Volia
A beach of smooth black volcanic pebbles and deep blue water in the far south, with a second, quieter cove over the rocks.
Emporios
Culture
The mosaics of Nea Moni
Visit the 11th-century monastery in the pines, then drive on to the ghost village of Anavatos and the sunset at Avgonyma.
The central hills
Culture
Sunset at the windmills
Walk north along the shore to the old windmills of Tampakika as the sun goes down behind the town, then have ouzo and meze on the waterfront.
Chios Town
Culture
Day trip to Turkey
The boat to Çeşme takes under an hour, so you can have lunch in Turkey and be back for dinner. Take your passport.
Chios Town to Çeşme
Food & wine
Fish by the sea in Lagada
Drive half an hour north of town to the fishing village of Lagada, where the people of Chios go for grilled fish and meze at tables along the water.
Lagada
Festival
The rocket war of Vrontados
On the night before Orthodox Easter, two parishes in Vrontados fire tens of thousands of homemade rockets at each other's churches across the valley. Watch it from a safe distance.
Vrontados, Easter Saturday
Only on Chios
What makes Chios different
What makes Chios different from every other island in the Aegean.
A resin that grows nowhere else
The lentisk trees of southern Chios are the only ones in the world that weep mastic, the fragrant resin used since antiquity in medicine, perfume, sweets and the first chewing gum. Its cultivation is on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage.
Villages built as castles
To guard the mastic, the Genoese fortified the villages of the south. In Mesta the outer houses form the walls, the lanes run under vaults, and the roofs connect so that people could cross the village without touching the ground.
Houses dressed in lace
In Pyrgi almost every façade is covered in xysta, geometric patterns scratched into grey plaster to show the white beneath, a craft found nowhere else in Greece.
Mosaics of gold in the hills
Nea Moni, founded in the 11th century by the emperor Constantine IX, keeps some of the finest Byzantine mosaics anywhere and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with Hosios Loukas and Daphni.