It is impossible not to feel the weight of history when you arrive in Kos. The marble of Hellenistic and Roman sites, the sandstone of medieval churches and castles, are all tangible legacies of a long history. However, to imagine that Kos only appeals to archaeology buffs would be a mistake. With long, hot summer days, a balmy sea lapping numerous beaches, and lots to do, the island is a holidaymakers’ paradise.
Kos belongs to the Dodecanese, an archipelago scattered in the southeastern Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey. Originally made up of twelve major islands (dódeka nisiá means ‘twelve islands’ in Greek) that coordinated action against Ottoman repression during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the group is now an administrative sub-region of Greece comprising several dozen islands and islets, though only twenty have permanent inhabitants.
Admiring the view from the Asklepion
Britta Jaschinski/Apa Publications
Kos ranks third among the Dodecanese in size – but second in population at 33,388 – and has been settled since ancient times, thanks to wide fertile plains, and a good harbour opposite Asia Minor, just three nautical miles away. The island is roughly 40km/24.7 miles long, 11km/6 miles wide at the thickest point, 287.2 sq km/111 sq miles in area, and orientated northeast to southwest on its long axis. Its coastline, a mix of sheer cliffs or beach, measures 112km/70 miles. Sand dunes are stabilised by important groves of strictly protected sea juniper (Juniperus macrocarpa), in Greek kédros and thus invariably, wrongly translated as ‘cedar’. There are more junipers, and pines, up on the central mountain. Geologically, Kos is of partly volcanic origin (in the southwest), and rose from the seabed in stages between 1 million and 158,000 years ago. There are important wetlands at Alykí and Psalídi, which attract dozens of species of migrating birds annually.
Kos has always been a ‘breadbasket’ island, with a very limited maritime tradition, and could still be agriculturally self-sustaining if the need arose. In antiquity, Kos was renowned for its silk and wine; the silk industry is long gone, but wine-making has recently revived with a bang, and tasting local bottlings should be part of any visit. Unlike many holiday islands, farming has not completely been elbowed aside – herds of cattle grazing amidst wire-bound bales of hay are still very much part of the landscape, and local cheese is quite esteemed.
The melon island
Near Linopótis, roadside stalls sell melons. The island has always been famous for watermelons especially, formerly exporting them in quantity to other parts of Greece. Old-timers on barren nearby islets remember, as children, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the summer watermelon boats from Kos.
Kos was never strong enough to rule itself, but desirable and strategically located enough to be coveted by every east-Mediterranean empire or nearby state. It has, by turns, been part of the Dorian Hexapolis, the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Athens’ Delian Confederacy, ancient Karya, the Alexandria-based Ptolemaic kingdom, the Roman republic and empire, Byzantium, Crusader principalities, the Ottoman Empire, the Italian ‘Islands of the Aegean’, and only since 1948 the modern Greek state. Each of these possessors from the Ptolemies onwards have left their mark on the island. Uneasy relations with adjacent Turkey mean that Kos has been heavily garrisoned by Greece since the 1950s, and when touring you shouldn’t be surprised to see tanks or armoured vehicles exercising in the volcanic badlands and ravines near the airport, or parked in ranks at nearby military bases. Of late, better relations, and Greece’s budgetary distress, mean that the military presence is rather scaled down – and you are as likely to see Turkish civilian holidaymakers as any other.
Kos harbour
Britta Jaschinski/Apa Publications
Kos of the Tourists
The Italians built the first hotel on Kos in 1928, but British mass tourism arrived (at Kardámena) only during the 1970s, something observed wryly in John Ebdon’s long-out-of-print but easy to obtain Ebdon’s Iliad. The Dutch ‘pioneered’ the northern section of Kos Town, as well as the ‘bar lanes’ at Mandráki, during the 1980s, and to some extent have remained loyal to it. Italians, Belgians and Germanophones were next; an increasing orientation towards the family and convention markets was signalled by the opening of many all-inclusive resorts around the millennium. Russians appeared just after that, but their numbers have now dropped as sanctions against Putin’s regime shred the ruble’s value. Cross-border tourism is increasingly significant, with potential Turkish visitors helped by the fact that the crossing from Bodrum opposite is the cheapest and most reliable for any of Greece’s frontier islands.
The evil gecko
In most of Greece, indeed in most cultures, gecko lizards are considered lucky to have around, and useful since they consume numerous insects. Koans, oddly, resent the creature; whilst the standard Greek for ‘gecko’ is samiamídi, in local dialect their name is miaró (impure) – possibly because of their outsized faeces.
For much of the 1980s and 1990s, Kos had a bad press, derided for being flat and boring – the centre of the island is indeed so low-lying that the peak of Nísyros can be glimpsed above it from Kálymnos to the north – as well as for its alleged lack of architectural or culinary distinction. Clearly those deriders hadn’t seen forested central Mt Díkeos or the rugged Kéfalos peninsula, Kos’ unique Italian architectural heritage, or tasted the – by Greek island standards – highly idiosyncratic local cuisine, dishing up everything from Turkish-style kebabs to candied tomatoes to wine-marinated cheese to pork brawn.
View from the Ágios Stéfanos basilica to Kéfalos beach
Getty Images
In fact Kos has a lot to boast about: tourism has long been handled uncharacteristically efficiently on Kós, courtesy of a well-developed infrastructure: the urban bus service is a marvel, cyclists and the disabled are actively catered for with a network of marked bicycle lanes and wheelchair ramps in and around Kos Town, and proudly signposted biological sewage plants at Psalídi and Kardámena have had had a salutary effect on island seawater quality.
Twenty-first-century Kos remains one of the most popular islands with package holidaymakers, thanks to its many fine beaches, castles, and nightlife, as well as strong air links to northern Europe. With no university faculty (unlike many other large Greek islands) and no industry to speak of, tourism is the linchpin of the local economy. This is even more critical now given the country’s economic tailspin in other respects, and you will be welcomed with open arms.
Refugees and Kos
Kos spent much of 2015 in the media spotlight as the destination of some of the 200,000 migrants who arrived in Greece by sea through September. At one point there were 7,500 refugees – mostly Syrian but also Iraqi and Afghan – on Kos, some housed in disused hotels but otherwise sleeping rough. Each summer day, up to another thousand landed on rubber rafts, abandoned (along with life-vests) on assorted beaches. Greece overall, and Kos in particular, was unable to cope; mid-economic crisis, the country simply hadn’t the resources to house and feed so many unexpected guests, and received scant assistance from the EU. On Kos (and other islands), sympathetic foreigners brought in supplies or took up local collections to feed and clothe the refugees, many of them women and children.
The immigrants, neither aggressive nor importunate towards tourists, shouldn’t affect your holiday plans; all efforts are made to transfer them to Piraeus and the Lávrio refugee camp as soon as possible.