Things to do in Syros

Syros does not look like the Cyclades you have seen pictures of. Where the famous islands are whitewashed villages that grew into resorts, Ermoupoli is a nineteenth-century city with a marble main square, an opera house and a working shipyard. It is the administrative capital of the Cyclades and it has ordinary Greek life going on around you in a way the famous islands mostly no longer do. That is the reason to come, and it is what everything below is made of.

Miaouli Square, which is the centre of the whole thing. The town rises from a working port in tiers of neoclassical houses, and its heart is a broad marble plaza with the town hall on one side, palm trees, and cafes that fill with locals rather than tour groups. Sitting in it for an hour tells you more about Syros than any list of sights, because the square is in constant use rather than preserved.

The Apollon Theatre, a miniature opera house. Behind the square stands a small opera house built as a miniature of La Scala, and it is still in use. That sentence is the island in one line: a Cycladic rock with a working opera house on it, because the shipping money that built the town was spent on the things a city has rather than the things a village has.

The shipyard, which is not a museum piece. The town holds an industrial museum that takes the shipbuilding seriously, and it can afford to, because the yards are still there and still working. Most Greek islands present their industrial past as heritage. Here the noise is current, and the museum reads as an explanation rather than an elegy.

The two hills, which are the island’s clearest history lesson. Two hills stand above Ermoupoli, each crowned by a church, and they belong to different faiths. Ano Syros, the older, is the Catholic settlement founded under Venetian rule, a knot of stepped lanes climbing to the cathedral of Saint George. Syros keeps one of the few substantial Catholic populations in Greece, and this is where it lives. Vrontado, opposite, is the Orthodox hill, topped by the church of the Resurrection. Two faiths, two hills, one skyline, and you can read the island’s history off it from the ferry.

Walking up Ano Syros is the best hour on the island. No cars, steps and arches, and the harbour dropping away below. It is the one thing to do here if you only do one, and it costs nothing. The lanes are lived in rather than staged, which is the difference between this and the photogenic villages further south.

What Syros is not. It is not a beach destination, and being clear about that is more useful than pretending otherwise. The coast has sandy bays with a taverna behind them and no beach clubs, which is perfectly good if you are here and a poor reason to come. The beaches page says the same thing at more length.

How it fits a trip. Syros is a ferry hub with a small airport, and it sits centrally enough to connect to most of the Cyclades, which makes it a natural first or last stop on a hopping route rather than a destination in itself. Two nights is enough to see the town properly and swim twice. It also works as the calm end of a trip that starts somewhere louder. Our Syros guide has the rest, Athens to Syros covers getting here, and Greek island ferries covers how the routes join up.