Zia, a balcony on Mt Dikaios for the Aegean sunset

Most of Kos is flat and sandy, with the beach towns spread along it. Zia is different. It sits about 14 km from Kos Town, high on the northern slopes of Mt Dikaios, the mountain the ancients called Oromedon. Pine, cypress and plane trees grow around it, and the air is cooler. From almost every terrace you look down over the fields and the salt lake of Tigaki to the sea, with Kalymnos, Pserimos and the Turkish coast lined up on the horizon.

For most of its history Zia was a farming village. Springs ran down from the mountain, and families lived off olives, vines, goats and honey, much as the villages of Asfendiou below it still do. Its lanes, stone houses and small whitewashed churches come from that life. The steep paths up the mountain began as shepherds' tracks.

Today the village lives off the view. By day its lanes are lined with stalls selling thyme honey, mountain herbs, spices, soaps and spoon sweets. In the late afternoon, cars and tour buses climb up from the coast, and the tavernas set their tables along the edge of the hill, all facing west.

Zia can be busy at sunset in high summer. Come in the morning, stay for a walk on the mountain, or spend the night, and you will find it as quiet as it is high. When the last bus has gone down, there is just birdsong, the smell of pine and the lights of the coast below.