Mykonos

Herodotus names the Carians as the island's first inhabitants, followed, it seems, by Ionians from Athens in the early 11th century BC. Delos, the religious centre of the Aegean, lies only 2 km away, so Mykonos served as a supply and transit point, but it was a poor island with little farmland. It joined the League of the Islanders after Alexander the Great and passed to Rome and Byzantium. After the Fourth Crusade the Ghisi family took it in 1204 and built a castle in 1207, on the site of today's Kastro quarter; Venice ruled directly from 1390.

In 1537 the Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa took the island, which stayed Ottoman until 1830 under a system of local self-government. Until the end of the 18th century it prospered as a trading centre, and in 1794 British and French ships fought a battle in its harbour. In the War of Independence the island was led by Manto Mavrogenous, an aristocrat who spent her family fortune on the Greek cause and whose statue stands in the square named after her.

Sailing and trade revived the economy, but it declined in the late 19th century, especially after the opening of the Corinth Canal and during the First World War, and many islanders emigrated, especially to the United States. In September 1944 the Greek Sacred Squadron raided the German garrison, which surrendered; the island was liberated on 30 September. Visitors came first for the French excavations on Delos, begun in 1873; the jet set arrived in the 1960s, gay travellers in the 1980s, and by the 2000s Mykonos was one of Greece's most expensive islands.

Chora is the island's cultural signature: whitewashed cube houses with coloured trim, narrow lanes, windmills on the ridge and a great many chapels, many built because islanders were long expected to build a church on their land before a house. Paraportiani, five churches joined into one, is the best known; the island also has a Catholic church, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, built in 1668.

Mykonos has a reputation as a gay-friendly island. It became a leading gay destination in the 1980s and remains one of the most popular in Europe, and its nightlife, from Little Venice's cocktail bars to beach clubs on the south coast, is famous. Artists have long been drawn to the light and the coastline, and Chora has many galleries; the Mykonos Biennale, inaugurated in 2013, offers theatre, film, art and music.

Older traditions survive alongside. The monastery of Panagia Tourliani in Ano Mera holds the island's revered icon and celebrates in mid-August. The museums of Chora, among them the folklore museum in the island's oldest house and Lena's House, a preserved 19th-century home of a shipping family, keep the seafaring past alive. A pelican called Petros has been the town's mascot since the 1950s, with successors taking the name.

About 10,700 people lived on Mykonos at the 2021 census, most of them in Chora. The island receives at least 1.5 million visitors a year and can accommodate about 50,000 people a night, so in summer residents are heavily outnumbered. Known as the Island of the Winds, Mykonos covers 85.5 square kilometres of rocky, mostly granite land and rises to 341 metres at its highest point.

Tourism dominates the economy, with luxury hotels still opening; clay and baryte were mined in the east until the late 20th century. There are no rivers, and fresh water comes partly from reservoirs on seasonal streams and partly from desalination plants producing about 4,500 cubic metres a day.

Life swings between a frantic summer and a quiet winter when many businesses close. Shops in town keep long hours in season, closing in the afternoon and reopening into the evening. The pressures of success, from cruise crowds to building on the hillsides, are part of island life.

Mykonos's most famous product is kopanisti, a salty, spicy cheese with a protected designation of origin, made on the island for more than 300 years; its peppery bite comes from the microbial activity encouraged by repeated kneading as it ripens. It is also produced on other Cycladic islands, among them Tinos, Andros, Syros and Naxos.

Island cooking follows the Cycladic pattern of simple ingredients from dry land and sea: fish and grilled octopus by the harbour, and meze with ouzo; an old windmill above the town, the Bonis Mill, houses an agricultural museum of old tools and machinery. Fava, a smooth purée of split peas or vetchling, and village salads with local cheese appear on taverna menus throughout the islands.

Chora has most of the island's restaurants, from gyros and souvlaki shops and creperies in the back streets to expensive waterfront dining in Little Venice. The tavernas around the square in Ano Mera offer a calmer, more local setting, and the town's bars and beach clubs make drinking, often at high prices, a central part of a Mykonos evening.