What Is Chios Known For?

Chios grows a resin found nowhere else on earth at commercial scale, and that same crop shaped both the island's centuries of prosperity and one of the darkest chapters in modern Greek history.

Chios is known first for mastic, an aromatic resin harvested from trees that grow productively only in the island's southern region. Prized since antiquity and once known as the tears of Chios, the resin brought the island genuine wealth and, under both Genoese and later Ottoman rule, a level of autonomy rare anywhere else in the region. The Genoese built fortified mastic villages, known as the Mastichochoria, including Pyrgi and Mesta, designed to protect both residents and the harvest from pirate raids, and these villages remain among the best preserved historic settlements in Greece today.

That same mastic wealth is inseparable from the island's most significant historical tragedy. When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, Chios's leaders hesitated to join the uprising, fearing the loss of the privileges their prosperity had secured. In March 1822, fighters from neighboring Samos landed and declared the revolution anyway, and the Ottoman response that followed devastated the island, with tens of thousands of residents killed and tens of thousands more taken captive over the following months. Notably, the Sultan ordered the mastic-producing villages spared, given their continued economic value to the empire. The event shocked Europe, helped build international support for Greek independence, and inspired French painter Eugène Delacroix's 1824 work The Massacre at Chios, now displayed at the Louvre.

Chios still holds that history central to its identity today, remembered through museums and annual commemorations, and connects by ferry to Samos across the eastern Aegean.