Chora, the white maze by the old port

Chora's lanes twist and dead-end so often that islanders say the maze was laid out to slow down pirates who came ashore; true or not, it still slows down everyone who tries to find their hotel at 3 a.m. The oldest part is the Kastro, the Venetian castle quarter of the Ghisi family above the harbour, where Panagia Paraportiani, 'Our Lady of the Side Gate', grew from 1425 into a white heap of five churches.

The town has an unusual number of churches, many of them tiny family chapels: the old custom was that you built a church on your land before you were allowed a house. Behind the waterfront, the three wells of Tria Pigadia, dug in 1722 and only 5 or 6 m deep, still stand, and the Municipal Library sits in an 18th-century mansion on the square of Agia Kyriaki.

Since 1958 the waterfront has also had a pelican. Petros, a great white pelican found wounded by a fisherman, became the island's mascot until a car killed him in 1985; he was stuffed on the municipality's orders, and today three pelicans waddle round the harbour, one of them called Petros.