What Is Syros Known For?

Syros became the industrial and commercial heart of newly independent Greece in the 19th century, and for several decades it actually outranked both Athens and Piraeus in economic importance.

Syros is known first for Ermoupoli, its capital, founded between 1821 and 1823 by refugees fleeing the destruction of Chios, Psara, Crete, and parts of Asia Minor during the Greek War of Independence. The city took its name from Hermes, the ancient god of commerce, and that name proved fitting, since Ermoupoli's neutral, protected harbor turned it into the main hub for trade between the West and East, giving the island Greece's first hospital in 1823 and its first high school a decade later, where statesman Eleftherios Venizelos later studied.

The island is equally known for shipbuilding, since the Neorion shipyard, established in 1826 and expanded in 1861, once employed roughly 2,000 workers and delivered around 80 ships annually, including Greece's first steamship, built on Syros in 1854. Tarsanas, a smaller traditional shipyard founded in 1860, still operates today using specialist wooden-boat techniques, making it the oldest working shipyard of its kind in the country, and the craftsmanship earned enough of a reputation that French novelist Alexandre Dumas personally traveled to Syros in 1859 to commission a sailing vessel.

That industrial wealth left a visible mark on Ermoupoli's architecture, and the neoclassical mansions built by shipowners and merchants during the island's boom years still line the city's marble-paved streets and squares today, a legacy that earned Syros the old nickname the Manchester of Greece for its rows of factory chimneys.

Syros connects easily to Mykonos and Tinos by ferry, both close enough for a day trip from an island that spent much of the 19th century as the Cyclades' actual center of gravity.