Culture
A night at the Apollo
See an opera, a concert or a play in the little 19th-century theatre, ideally during the Festival of the Aegean in July, then join the town in Miaoulis Square.
Ermoupoli
Syros · Things to do
Things to do in Syros
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.
Beach
Swim below the mansions
Climb down the ladders at Asteria or the rocks below Agios Nikolaos and swim in the deep water in front of the captains' houses.
Vaporia, Ermoupoli
Hike
Walk down from Ano Syros
Take the bus up to the Catholic hill, wander its covered lanes to the cathedral of San Giorgio, then walk down the long stairways to the harbour, with the whole town in front of you.
Ano Syros to Ermoupoli
Food & wine
Loukoumi from the workshop
Buy loukoumi and halvadopita in the shops and workshops of the market street, and try the flavours you will not find elsewhere.
Ermoupoli
Festival
Easter on two hills
Spend Holy Week on Syros, when Catholics and Orthodox celebrate together and the epitaphios processions wind through the streets of both hills on Good Friday night.
Ermoupoli and Ano Syros
Nature
The wild north
Drive or walk through the farmland of the north, past dry-stone walls and chapels, to the wild bays at the end of its tracks, and take a boat to the inscriptions of Grammata.
Ano Meria
Beach
Sunset in Kini
Do what the islanders do: cross to the west coast in the evening, swim and watch the sun go down over the open sea from a table by the water.
Kini
Culture
The Industrial Museum and the Neorion
Learn how a refugee town became the factory of Greece, then walk to the Neorion shipyard, still repairing ships at the end of the bay.
Ermoupoli
Only on Syros
What makes Syros different
What makes Syros different from every other island in the Cyclades.
Two hills, two faiths, one Easter
Syros has one of the largest Catholic communities in Greece. The Catholic cathedral of San Giorgio crowns the hill of Ano Syros, and the Orthodox church of the Anastasi crowns the hill of Vrontado next to it. The two communities have lived side by side for two centuries, and on Syros Catholics celebrate Easter on the Orthodox date, so the whole island keeps Holy Week together.
A city built by refugees
In the 1820s refugees from Chios, Psara, Kasos and Asia Minor came ashore below the neutral Catholic hill and built Ermoupoli. Within a few decades it was the main port of Greece, with the country's first steamship company, its shipyards and mills, and the money to pave its squares in marble and build an opera house.
Loukoumi and halvadopita
Syros is the Turkish-delight island of Greece. Workshops in Ermoupoli have made loukoumi since the 19th century, flavoured with rose, mastic, bergamot or nuts, and sell it by the box to every ferry passenger. Its partner is halvadopita, a thin round nougat pie with almonds between two wafers.
The king of rebetiko
Markos Vamvakaris, the bouzouki player and singer who made rebetiko the music of modern Greece, was born in Ano Syros in 1905. His song Frangosyriani, about a Catholic girl of the island, is one of the best-known Greek songs of the 20th century. There is a small museum to him on the hill where he grew up.
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