Symi Transfer

A Symi transfer is a short hop between the harbour of Symi and a village or bay on the island, or the crossing from Rhodes. It is one of the Greece tours that begin a Symi day with its harbour, its monastery and the sea.

What is a Symi transfer?

A Symi transfer is a journey that carries a traveller to or from the Greek island of Symi. The word transfer simply means moving a person from one place to another. In this phrase, Symi is the place at one end of that move.

In Greek, the name of the island is spelled Σύμη. The Symi municipality is the local area run by one council. It takes in uninhabited islets, which are tiny islands where nobody lives. Gialesino, Diavates, Kouloundros, Marmaras and Chondros are among them. Every Symi transfer therefore names one island inside a wider municipality.

Behind every Symi transfer stands a working community of islanders. They earn a living from tourism, fishing and trade. Tourism means welcoming visitors, fishing means catching fish from the sea, and trade means selling and buying goods. Symi also draws visitors from abroad, especially British, French and Italian travellers.

Symi was left out of the new Greek state and stayed under Ottoman rule. The Dodecanese, a group of islands, formed a separate province within the Eyalet of the Archipelago. An eyalet was an Ottoman region, larger than a province. That history forms part of the wider background to every Symi transfer.

Direct Ottoman rule covered Rhodes and Kos, but the remaining islands kept wide privileges, or special rights. The Dodecanese border Turkey to the east and the Cyclades to the west, with Crete to the southwest. Rule and borders together set the scene for a Symi transfer to the island.

• Residents: About 120 non-Greek residents live on Symi permanently, and about 50 of them are British.
• Sister city: In 2008 Symi gained a sister city in Tarpon Springs, Florida, a formal friendship between towns.
• Museum: The renovated Historical Museum of Symi reopened in late 2020, after repair and renewal.

The 2011 Kallikratis reform abolished the Dodecanese Prefecture, an older regional authority. It divided the territory of that prefecture into four regional units. Reform in modern times follows the Ottoman period in the long story of island rule.

On a Symi transfer, what does Panormitis bring?

A Symi transfer serves an island where Panormitis is the largest of the nine archangel monasteries on Symi. In Christian belief, an archangel ranks as a chief angel and leads the other angels. A monastery is a community house for monks, who live, work and pray there together.

Anyone who reads about a Symi transfer soon meets the name Panormitis. The monastery stands at the inner end of the Panormos bay, which gave it its name. Where the sea bends inward along the coast, the curve is a bay. The site sits between cypress and pine trees, on the south-western side of Symi.

A pilgrimage is a journey made to a holy place for prayer. In the south-east of Greece, the Dodecanese forms a group of islands. With Patmos, the monastery counts as one of the two largest pilgrimage sites of that group. A Symi transfer ends on an island that holds one of those two sites.

The courtyard has a pebble floor laid in fine geometric designs. Pebbles are small, smooth stones, and geometric designs are patterns made from lines and shapes. The bell tower resembles the one at the Zagorsk monastery near Moscow. The church bells are held in a bell tower, a tall structure.

The monastery museum adds a human side to a Symi transfer. It includes the old cellar, where the first monks kept food in large jars. It also keeps the first kitchen, with its hearth that burned wood. A cellar is a storeroom below ground, and a hearth is the floor of a fireplace.

• Guesthouses: Guesthouses, the rooms that take in visitors, can host up to 500 people at the monastery.
• Treasury: The treasury keeps votive offerings, which are prayer gifts that believers put into bottles.
• Library: The library holds 14 manuscripts, which are handwritten books, from the 16th century.

The monastery also took an active part in the 1821 revolution by funding the struggle. A revolution is a rising against a ruling power. Faith, craft and history meet at Panormitis, which gives a Symi transfer a deeper story.

On a Symi transfer, what does the Archangel Michael bring?

A Symi transfer page adds the figure of Archangel Michael, an archangel and warrior of God. Readers gain a clear picture of who he is. The history, feasts and art linked to his name give the page real depth.

The name Michael first appears in surviving Jewish works from the third and second centuries BC. Surviving means the texts have lasted to this day. The passage Revelation 12:7-12 also names Michael as the one who does battle with Satan. Readers of a Symi transfer page meet a name with deep written roots.

Michael is called Archangel because he heralds other angels, and to herald means to announce. The Eastern Orthodox give him the title Archistrategos, which means Supreme Commander of the Heavenly Hosts. The Heavenly Hosts are the angels of heaven, so the title places him at their head.

The Eastern Orthodox celebrate a number of feasts dedicated to Archangel Michael throughout the year. A feast is a religious festival. Eastern Orthodox churches use icons of Archangel Michael widely. An icon is a sacred painting of a holy person. Both honour Michael, and a Symi transfer page can name them.

The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the Miracle at Chonae on September 6. In the Chonae legend, the Archangel split the bedrock and directed a stream away from the church. Bedrock is the solid rock under the soil. The Chonae legend is one story a Symi transfer page can tell about him.

• Byzantine: Byzantine tradition credited Constantine with two holy places for Michael on the Bosporus shore.
• Art: A painting of Michael slaying a serpent became a major art piece at the Michaelion.
• Sailors: At the holy site of Mont Saint-Michel in France, the Archangel is the patron of mariners, or sailors.

The Roman, Anglican and Lutheran calendars celebrate the archangel’s feast on Michaelmas Day, 29 September. Michaelmas Day is the name of that feast. A Symi transfer page that ends with Michael closes on a date kept in three church calendars.

On a Symi transfer, what does sponge diving bring?

A Symi transfer gains a human story once sponge diving is understood. Sponge diving is underwater diving to collect soft natural sponges for human use. The craft connects Greek sea work with ordinary objects found in everyday home life.

Two sponge genera, meaning two scientific groups of related kinds, have soft skeletons. Their names are Hippospongia and Spongia. Each labels one group. In both, the skeleton is entirely fibrous, which means it is made only of fibres, or thin threads. A skeleton here is the inner frame that gives the sponge its shape.

Homer and Plato both mentioned the sponge in Ancient Greek writings. Ancient Greek is the early form of the Greek language. In those texts, the sponge appears as an object for bathing, a plain everyday use. Greek writers knew this humble object long ago, which adds depth to a Symi transfer.

Europeans found other jobs for soft sponges. They used them as helmet padding, as drinking utensils and as municipal water filters. Drinking utensils are things to drink from, and municipal means run by a town or city. Such uses show why the sponge belongs in the wider setting of a Symi transfer.

On the Greek island of Kalymnos, only 18% of the steep volcanic land was open to farming. Volcanic land is ground shaped by old volcanoes. Trading, boat building and sponge fishing were the main occupations there, meaning the main jobs. Island work of this kind frames a Symi transfer within a real local economy.

• Everyday use: Before man-made sponges, natural sponges served as cleaning tools and as ways to spread paint and glaze.
• Museums: Kalymnos has three museums that are about the sponge occupation, the work of gathering sponges.
• Today: Sponge diving remains a traditional occupation of Greeks on Kalymnos, though it is less common now.

Diving for sponges brought social and economic development to Kalymnos. A diver’s depth and bottom time depended on his lung capacity, meaning how much air he held. That human story gives a Symi transfer a deeper background.

On a Symi transfer, what does the Datca peninsula bring?

A Symi transfer gains background from the Datça Peninsula, a piece of land extending into the sea. The peninsula covers nearly the same ground as the Datça district, an official area inside Muğla Province. Both names point to nearly one area.

Readers curious about a Symi transfer can picture the area through plain numbers. The Datça district covers 436 square kilometers and has a population of 25,029. A square kilometer is an area one kilometer long and one kilometer wide. The town of Datça stands at the halfway point of the peninsula.

The two halves of the peninsula paint different pictures for a Symi transfer. The eastern half is bare, mountainous and thinly settled. Thinly settled land holds a low number of residents. The western part is mountainous as well and rises above 1,000 meters in places.

Five villages near the western end, on the south side, are known together as Betçe. Palamutbükü is now a holiday village with a long beach. A holiday village is a place that welcomes people on vacation. These village names add detail to the picture behind a Symi transfer.

Tekir, at the western tip, is the site of Knidos, an ancient city from long ago. Water lies on both sides of an isthmus, which is a narrow band of land. According to the writer Herodotus, the Knidians attempted to dig a canal across the isthmus. They wanted to make their land an island.

• Cape Deveboynu: A narrow strip of land joins it to the mainland; in ancient times it was a man-made road.
• Reşadiye: Datça and its peninsula were briefly called this, in honor of the ruler Sultan Mehmed V Reşad.
• Balıkaşıran: It is a natural curiosity with a wide view of the Gökova and Hisarönü gulfs, or large bays.

An oracle was a priest or priestess who spoke for the gods. The Knidians surrendered to the Persians after an oracle warned them not to pierce the isthmus. Tales such as this give a Symi transfer a deeper setting in the history of the coast.

On a Symi transfer, what does Knidos bring?

A Symi transfer page adds Knidos, a Greek city in ancient Caria, in what is now Turkey. The city sat on the Datça peninsula in south-western Turkey. Land that stretches far out from the coast into the water is called a peninsula.

The city stood partly on the mainland and partly on the Island of Triopion, or Cape Krio. A causeway, a raised path across water, turned the channel between island and mainland into two harbours. A Symi transfer page can describe Knidos as a city with two harbours made by one causeway.

The larger, southern harbour was enclosed by two strongly built moles. A mole is a wall built out into the sea to shelter a harbour. The city stretched a little less than a mile from end to end. On a Symi transfer page, that measure helps readers judge the size of the old city.

Praxiteles made the Aphrodite of Knidos, his famous statue, for the city. Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love. The original has perished, which means it is lost, but late copies exist. One late copy is kept in the Vatican Museums. A Symi transfer page can tell the story of this statue.

Two ancient writers wrote about how Knidos began. Herodotus wrote that the Cnidians, or people of Knidos, were Lacedaemonian colonists. Lacedaemonians were Spartans, and colonists are settlers in a new land. Diodorus Siculus claimed that Knidos was founded by both Lacedaemonians and Argives. Argives were people of the Greek city of Argos.

• Agora: The agora, an open square for markets and meetings, has been identified among the ruins.
• Theatre and odeum: A theatre and an odeum, a hall built for music, have also been identified.
• Temples: Temples of Dionysus, god of wine, the Muses, goddesses of art, and Aphrodite have been identified.

The ruins hold a large number of buildings in the Byzantine style. That style comes from the Eastern Roman Empire, a Greek-speaking state of the Middle Ages. Knidos adds this later layer of history to a Symi transfer page.

On a Symi transfer, what does Tilos bring?

A Symi transfer story gains depth from Tilos, an island of about 61 square kilometres. Its interior is mountainous limestone, while the lowlands are volcanic, with pumice beds and red lava sand. Pumice is a light rock made from cooled volcanic froth.

Charkadio cave lies near the centre of Tilos. Remains of a dwarf elephant species, Palaeoloxodon tiliensis, were found in that cave. Dwarf here means the animals were smaller than the elephants known today. This find gives a Symi transfer reader a striking first look at the deep past of Tilos.

People have lived on Tilos since at least the Final Neolithic, around the 4th millennium BC. The Final Neolithic marks the closing phase of the New Stone Age. In the classical era, Tilos minted its own coins. The island was famed for clothing and perfumes, which adds colour to any Symi transfer story.

In the 7th century BC, colonists from Tilos and Lindos founded the city of Gelas. Colonists are settlers who leave their home to start a new town in another place. From 1309, the Knights of Saint John restored older castles on Tilos and built new ones.

Mikro Chorio, the old capital, was first settled in the 15th century by the Knights of St John. Later the village became a ghost town, a place left empty of people. Today the village is an attraction on its own merits. That gives a Symi transfer story one more place worth knowing.

• Recent history: In 1912, Italian sailors came ashore at the bay of Eristos, which ended Ottoman rule.
• Clean power: Solar power, wind turbines and a battery farm make Tilos self-sufficient with fully renewable electricity.
• Monastery: The Tilos monastery, a home for monks, has an enormous loquat, a fruit tree, called Musmulla.

Niketas Chaviaras found 23 inscriptions on Tilos in 1920. An inscription is a text cut into stone, so these finds are written records found on the island. Tilos therefore adds written records to a Symi transfer story about the island’s long past.

On a Symi transfer, what questions come up?

A Symi transfer raises four plain questions about the season, the municipality, the airport and the gulf. Marmaris weather figures, municipality statistics, airport passenger counts and gulf place names supply the answers. Each of the four answers keeps to the facts recorded for that topic.

Which season suits a Symi transfer?

Marmaris highs average 21.5 °C, 34.9 °C and 26.5 °C in April, July and October. Marmaris rain averages 73.3 mm, 5.6 mm and 87.92 mm in those months. Marmaris night lows average 11.8 °C, 23.9 °C and 16.7 °C in turn.

Which municipality holds a Symi transfer?

A single council governs each municipality, a local area. The municipality of Symi has a highest elevation of 617 metres. In 2021, its density was 39.59 people per square kilometre. Its coordinates, which fix a place on the map, are 36°35′N 27°50′E.

Which airport serves a Symi transfer?

In December 2015, the privatisation of Rhodes International Airport and 13 other regional airports was finalised. Privatisation means public property passes to private control. Rhodes International Airport handled 1,551,123 passengers in total in 2020. In 2023, the same airport handled 6,142,813 passengers in total.

Which gulf lies near a Symi transfer?

The gulf’s coastline runs through the districts of Bodrum, Milas, Muğla, Ula, Marmaris and Datça. Akyaka and Gökova, two small towns, sit on the flat river-silt plain at the gulf’s end. Hamlets, meaning tiny villages, across the Gökova plain were collectively known as Gökabad.