What Is Telendos Known For?

Telendos used to be part of Kalymnos, until a fourteen-day earthquake in 535 AD tore the two apart and sent an entire ancient city sliding beneath the sea between them.

Telendos is known first for that earthquake, recorded by the historian Agathias as lasting a full two weeks and severe enough to submerge much of Pothaia, the settlement that once stood where the narrow channel now separates the two islands. Telendos had belonged to the Delian League in antiquity as part of a unified Kalymnos, and the disaster left it a standalone islet roughly 700 meters offshore, its former capital largely lost to the water.

That sunken history remains genuinely visible today. Snorkelers swimming the channel between Myrties and Telendos can still make out submerged walls and structures from the old city, while ruins of Roman baths, an ancient theater, and early Christian basilicas survive on land across the island, giving Telendos physical evidence of the settlement it used to be both above and below the waterline.

The island is also known for its steep, near-vertical terrain, a single mountain rising directly from the sea that has made Telendos a genuine destination for rock climbers drawn to its crags. Local folklore has attached its own story to that same landscape: viewed from Kalymnos at sunset, the mountain's silhouette resembles a woman lying down, and tradition holds she was once a princess turned to stone while waiting for a lover who never returned.

Telendos remains genuinely small, with a population recorded at just 66 residents in the most recent census, no roads or cars anywhere on the island, and a single settlement connected to Kalymnos only by a short boat crossing.