The North Aegean Islands

These islands lay on the edge of Asia Minor and shared its early brilliance. Lesbos was the home of the poets Sappho and Alcaeus around 600 BC, and Aristotle studied the island's marine life in the lagoon at Kalloni. Samos, under the tyrant Polycrates in the 6th century BC, built a vast temple of Hera and a water tunnel cut through a mountain by the engineer Eupalinos; Pythagoras was born there. Chios claims Homer as a son, and Lemnos, sacred in myth to the smith-god Hephaestus, holds Poliochni, one of the oldest settlements in the Aegean.

In the late Middle Ages Genoese families took over: the Gattilusio ruled Lesbos until the Ottomans captured it in 1462, and a Genoese company, the Maona, controlled Chios and its lucrative mastic trade until 1566. Under the Ottomans Chios remained rich and relatively privileged, which made its fate in the War of Independence the more shocking: after an uprising in 1822, Ottoman forces killed or enslaved much of the island's population, an event painted by Delacroix and remembered across Europe. Samos became an autonomous principality under Ottoman sovereignty in 1834.

The islands joined Greece in 1912 during the Balkan Wars. Lemnos's harbour of Moudros was the Allied base for the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 and gave its name to the armistice that ended the Ottoman war in 1918. After the 1922 defeat in Asia Minor, refugees arrived in large numbers. In the 20th century Ikaria and other islands were places of exile for left-wing opponents of the state, and in 2015 Lesbos became a main European landing point for refugees crossing from Turkey.

The North Aegean looks east. Many families have roots in Smyrna and the towns of the Anatolian coast, and old people still name places on the Turkish shore as ancestral homes. Chios and its tiny neighbour Oinousses produced some of Greece's great shipowning families, and island pride is bound up with the sea.

Festivals are the region's best-known tradition. Ikaria's panigyria, saints' day feasts where a whole village eats, drinks and dances the ikariotikos through the night, have become famous across Greece, and Ikaria's relaxed pace of life is part of its reputation for longevity. On Chios, the Easter rouketopolemos, or "rocket war", sees two parishes in Vrontados fire home-made rockets at each other's churches.

Lesbos has a strong artistic identity. The naive painter Theophilos, who decorated village cafés and walls with scenes of Greek history, has a museum near Mytilene, and the Nobel-winning poet Odysseas Elytis came from a Lesbian family. Skala Eresou, near Eresos, the traditional birthplace of Sappho, draws lesbian travellers from around the world. The mastic villages of Chios keep their distinctive xysta, geometric patterns scratched into plaster.

About 195,000 people live in the North Aegean. Mytilene, the regional capital and seat of the University of the Aegean, has about 41,000 residents in its municipal unit; Chios Town has about 32,000, and Vathy on Samos and Myrina on Lemnos are much smaller. Ikaria has fewer than 10,000 people, and the smallest inhabited islands, such as Agios Efstratios and Psara, far fewer.

The economy leans less on tourism than elsewhere in the Aegean. Lesbos has millions of olive trees and a major ouzo industry, Chios grows mastic and citrus and remains a home port for shipowners, Samos makes wine, and Lemnos farms grain, sheep and cheese. Tourism is steady rather than overwhelming, with many visitors from the Greek diaspora and from Turkey across the strait.

Life is slower and more year-round than in the Cyclades. The pressing issues are depopulation and ageing in inland villages, the handling of migration and the future of reception camps after the fire that destroyed Moria on Lesbos in 2020, the cost of transport to Athens, and wildfire damage to forests and mastic groves.

Lesbos is Greece's ouzo capital, and the distilleries of Plomari are the best known. The island's sardines from the Gulf of Kalloni, sardeles Kallonis, are eaten with ouzo, and its ladotyri, a sheep's- and goat's-milk cheese preserved in olive oil, is a protected product.

Chios is defined by mastiha, the resin of the mastic tree, produced in the villages of the south of the island. It flavours liqueur, chewing gum, sweets and bread, and the southern villages have controlled its production since Roman times. The citrus orchards of Kampos, south of Chios Town, are known for their mandarins.

Samos is famous for its sweet Muscat wine, made from the Muscat grapes of the vineyards that cover much of the island. Lemnos makes the Limnio red and a dry Muscat white, and kalathaki, a protected white cheese of sheep's and goat's milk. Ikaria's kitchen is simple and vegetable-based, built on olive oil, garden produce and little meat, eaten with the island's strong red wine and followed by herbal teas.

Lesbos, the largest island, has a Genoese castle above Mytilene, the stone village of Molyvos climbing to its fortress in the north, the hill village of Agiasos, and Plomari's ouzo distilleries. In the far west the Petrified Forest near Sigri preserves fossil trees in a UNESCO Global Geopark, and Skala Eresou has a long beach. Lesbos is also rated one of the best islands in the world for birdwatching.

Chios has the monastery of Nea Moni, a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its mosaics, the abandoned cliff village of Anavatos, the citrus orchards of Kampos, and the mastic villages of the south, Pyrgi with its decorated walls, Mesta with its maze of lanes, and Olympi. Samos has Pythagoreion, the Heraion and the tunnel of Eupalinos, together UNESCO-listed, the harbour village of Kokkari and the high peak of Kerkis.

Ikaria has hot springs at Therma, the wild beach at Nas, Armenistis on the north coast and mountain villages such as Christos Rachon. Lemnos has Myrina's castle, the prehistoric site of Poliochni, ancient Hephaistia and the sanctuary of the Kabeiroi, the sand dunes of Pachies Ammoudies, and the Commonwealth war cemeteries at Moudros and Portianos.