What Is Psara Known For?

Psara carries one of the most significant, and one of the most painful, chapters of the Greek War of Independence, a history that still shapes how the island remembers itself today.

Psara is known first for its naval role in the revolution. By the early 19th century, the island had built one of Greece's largest merchant fleets, with more than 40 ships, ranking alongside Hydra and Spetses as a genuine maritime power. Psariots joined the uprising against Ottoman rule on April 10, 1821, and naval commanders from the island, including future Greek Prime Minister Constantine Kanaris, became known for using fire ships to devastating effect against the far larger Ottoman navy.

That resistance came at real cost. In June 1824, Ottoman forces invaded the island, and after several days of fighting, remaining soldiers and civilians made a final stand at the fortress of Palaiokastro on Mavri Rachi hill. The island's population, once numbering in the thousands, was devastated in the following battle, with many killed and others taken captive, and Psara's population never recovered to its former size in the two centuries since. The event, remembered in Greek history as the Destruction of Psara, inspired some of the country's most significant cultural works, including a poem by Dionysios Solomos and a painting by Nikolaos Gyzis, and Greece still commemorates the anniversary each year.

A priest and scholar named Theophilos Kairis took in many of the island's orphaned children in the aftermath, and a statue known as the Glory of Psara now stands at Mavri Rachi, marking the site where the island's last stand took place, connecting Psara's history of sacrifice to nearby Chios, which endured its own devastating chapter of the same war just two years earlier.