Is Chios Worth Visiting?

Chios grows the only mastic trees in the world that produce their aromatic resin, and the fifth largest Greek island has built an entire regional identity, and export industry, around a substance found nowhere else on earth.

Chios sits in the northeastern Aegean close to the Turkish coast, and its southern mastic villages, known collectively as the mastichochoria, were built by Genoese settlers in the 13th century with fortified walls and narrow streets designed to protect both residents and the resin trade. Mesta, the best preserved of them, keeps a maze of stone alleys centered on the Church of Michael and Gabriel, while Pyrgi, the largest, covers its house facades in black and white geometric patterns called xysta, made using sand from the island's own volcanic beaches.

The UNESCO-listed Nea Moni monastery, built in the 11th century in Byzantine style, sits in the island's mountainous center, and the Cave of Olympi, discovered in 1985 after a landslide, holds some of the densest concentrations of stalactites and stalagmites in the Balkans. Mavra Volia, near the harbor village of Emborios, turns the shoreline black with volcanic pebbles formed by an extinct volcano, and Kampos, a fertile plain outside Chios Town, holds citrus orchards and mansion houses built by the island's historic shipping families.

The Chios Mastic Museum near Pyrgi traces the harvesting process that has stayed largely unchanged since Byzantine times and earned a place on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage, and roughly 5,000 producers still work the trees across more than 20 mastic villages today. Local cuisine reflects the island's fertile land and coastal position, from citrus and artichokes to fresh sea bream, and mastic itself turns up in everything from liqueur to ice cream sold across the island.

Chios has its own airport with flights from Athens in around 50 minutes, and ferries connect from Piraeus in about 8 hours. It suits travelers drawn to real history, distinctive architecture, and food culture found nowhere else in Greece, and locals and repeat visitors generally suggest three to five days to cover the mastic villages, the monastery, and the coastline properly.