The Island of Patmos

«On the previous day, shortly after midnight, “I was in the isle that is called Patmos”. As dawn was about to break, I was high up in Chora. The sea, immobile like metal, bound the surrounding islands. Not a leaf stirred in the strengthening light. The peace was a shell without trace of a crack. I remained nailed to the spot by the force of the place; then I felt I was whispering: “Come and see…”»

George Seferis, I Apokalypsi tou Ioanni (preface to Seferis’ translation of the Revelation of St John), Athens, Ikaros, 1966



The multifarious indented coastline, ten times larger than the coastline of Greece in relation to its size, creates unique bays and beaches, some pebbly, others with sand or rocks and caves that make Patmos an ideal destination of peace, tranquility, mysticism and leisure, embracing with its aura every visitor.



Patmos is the island ,witch with its devoutness and its original beauty consisted a source of inspiration not only for the Nobel-laureates Greek poets Seferis and Elytis, but also for the German lyric poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who shocked by the natural beauty of the island wrote:

(…) On the sea’s uncertain plain, shadowless roads enough
Though my seafarer knows the islands. And since I had heard,
That among those near at hand was Patmos,
Much I desired to put in there and be close to its dark cave.
For not like lordly Cyprus, with its abounding waters,
Nor like any other island does Patmos dwell,
But still hospitable in her poorer house is she,
And if a stranger comes from shipwreck or grieving
For his lost homeland or distant friend
She listens, and her children,
Voices of the hot thicket, a trickle of sand,
Earth splitting in a field, her sounds,
They hear him and a loving echo flows from his lament.
Thus did she care once for the god-beloved Seer
Who in his blessed youth had walked
With the Son of the Highest, inseparably (…)

Friedrich Hölderlin (1803), trans. Robert Huddleston