The Cyclades & the Dodecanese

The Cyclades take their name from the "circle" they form around Delos. In the third millennium BC their islanders carved the flat, abstract marble figurines of Cycladic art, and in the Bronze Age Santorini's town at Akrotiri, painted with frescoes, was buried by the great eruption that created the caldera. Delos became the religious centre of the Aegean, sacred to Apollo and Artemis, and in 478 BC the treasury of the Athenian-led Delian League. In the Dodecanese, the three cities of Rhodes founded a joint capital in 408 BC, whose bronze Colossus stood until an earthquake toppled it in 226 BC; Kos was the home of Hippocrates, and on Patmos John the Apostle is said to have written the Book of Revelation.

After the Fourth Crusade, the Venetian Marco Sanudo founded the Duchy of the Archipelago on Naxos in 1207, and the Knights Hospitaller took Rhodes in 1310, ruling the Dodecanese from their fortified city until Suleiman the Magnificent drove them out in 1522. The Ottomans also absorbed the Cyclades during the 16th century, though Tinos stayed Venetian until 1715.

The Cyclades joined independent Greece in the 1830s, and Syros's port of Ermoupoli, founded by refugees from Chios and Psara, became the country's busiest harbour for a time. The Dodecanese followed a different path: Italy seized them in 1912 and ruled for three decades. German occupation brought the deportation of the Jews of Rhodes and Kos, and the islands joined Greece in 1947. Tourism later transformed the islands.

Island identity is fiercely local. Each island has its own saints, dialect words, dances and rivalries, and the panigyri, the saint's-day festival with free food, wine and dancing through the night, is the heart of the summer calendar. The music is nisiotika, island songs played on violin and lute, with the tsambouna bagpipe on some islands. Syros, home of the rebetiko musician Markos Vamvakaris, has one foot in the city tradition too.

Religion is Orthodox, but the Cyclades hold long-established Catholic communities, a Venetian legacy, on Syros, Tinos and Naxos. Tinos's church of the Panagia Evangelistria draws Greece's biggest pilgrimage on 15 August, with some of the faithful crossing the approach on their knees.

Old ways survive in pockets. The village of Olympos on Karpathos keeps an archaic dialect and women who still wear traditional costume, Kalymnos is proud of its sponge divers, and the whitewashed villages of the Cyclades still hold to a style of building shaped by wind, sun and scarce timber. The Dodecanese carry an Italian flavour in architecture and some words, and older people on Rhodes still remember Italian school.

About 330,000 people live in the South Aegean. Rhodes is the largest island, with around 125,000 people, and Rhodes Town is the biggest city, while Ermoupoli on Syros, a handsome neoclassical port, is the regional capital. Kos, Naxos, Paros and Santorini each have somewhere near 15,000 to 35,000 residents; many of the smaller islands have only a few hundred.

Tourism dominates the economy to a degree unusual even in Greece, and the population of Santorini or Mykonos multiplies many times over in summer. Syros has shipyards and administration, Naxos farming and cheese, Milos mining of bentonite and perlite, and the Dodecanese a long seafaring tradition. Workers from the mainland and abroad arrive each spring to staff hotels and restaurants.

Life swings between a frantic season and a very quiet winter, when ferries thin out, shops close and the young often leave for Athens. The strains of success are the daily talk: water shortages met by desalination, housing priced beyond local workers by short-term lets, cruise-ship crowding on Santorini, building on untouched coastline, and the fragility of island hospitals and schools in winter.

Cycladic cooking was shaped by dry soil and little water. Santorini grows fava, the seeds of a local vetchling cooked into a smooth purée, as well as small intense cherry tomatoes fried into tomatokeftedes, tomato fritters. Sifnos is known for revithada, chickpeas baked slowly overnight in a clay pot.

Cheese differs from island to island. Naxos makes graviera, a hard sweet cheese, and arseniko; Mykonos has kopanisti, a spicy, fermented cheese. Syros is famous for loukoumi, soft jelly sweets, and halvadopites, a local sweet, while Rhodes makes melekouni, a sesame and honey sweet, and pitaroudia, fritters.

Wine is Santorini's pride. The Assyrtiko grape, grown in low baskets on volcanic soil against the wind, makes a crisp, mineral white, and the sweet Vinsanto is made from sun-dried grapes. Naxos distils kitron, a liqueur from the fruit and leaves of the citron tree, and Rhodes has its own wineries. Ouzo with grilled octopus by the harbour is the common island ritual.

Santorini is built along the rim of its drowned caldera, with the towns of Fira and Oia on the cliffs, the prehistoric site of Akrotiri under a protective roof, Ancient Thera on a ridge above the black-sand beaches of Kamari and Perissa, and boat trips to the volcanic islet of Nea Kameni. Mykonos has its windmills, the Little Venice waterfront and busy beaches, and boats run to Delos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with its Terrace of the Lions. Naxos has the Portara, the great marble doorway of an unfinished temple, a Venetian kastro, the mountain villages of Halki and Apeiranthos, and unfinished kouroi lying in ancient quarries. Paros has the Byzantine church of the Panagia Ekatontapyliani in Parikia and the harbour of Naoussa, with Antiparos and its cave next door. Milos has Sarakiniko's white rock, the sea caves of Kleftiko, the village of Plaka and the field where the Venus de Milo was found in 1820. Amorgos's cliff-hung Hozoviotissa monastery and Folegandros's Chora reward the extra ferry.

In the Dodecanese, the Medieval Town of Rhodes is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Lindos, with its acropolis above a white village, lies down the east coast. Kos has the Asklepieion, the healing sanctuary linked to Hippocrates, and the Knights' castle by the harbour. Patmos's Monastery of St John and Cave of the Apocalypse are UNESCO-listed, Symi has a harbour of neoclassical houses, and Nisyros has a walkable volcanic crater.