Chapter 15: Kastellorizo; continued

For the full Kastellorizo trip report and a few more pictures thrown in, you can read the entire article on my website (Disclaimer: This link is to a website to which I contribute/have a financial interest).

Australians and Italians

One particularly beautiful stretch of Kastellorizo Town is the upper part of town on the hill on the eastern side of the harbour. If you walk up the waterfront stairs you will come across some fine mansions in all kinds of different colours.Some of these are old buildings but others are newly constructed houses built in the same traditional style.

Many are built by wealthy Athenians or Australians as holiday houses. Why Australians you might ask yourself? Well, many locals left Kastellorizo for Australia in search of a better future during the harsh Italian occupation (1928 to 1943) and the immediate aftermath of World War II.

The children and grandchildren of these émigrés still visit Megisti regularly, which is why in summer you can often hear people talking in a thick Aussi accent!

However, during my trip there were almost none of these Greek Australians on the island as Australia did not allow people to leave the country for touristic reasons due to the corona virus pandemic.

In summer, Kastellorizo is also popular among Turkish visitors who hop over for a day from the city of Kaş, which is located eight kilometres away across the sea (at its closest point, Kastellorizo is just three kilometres away from Turkey).

But this summer there were also zero Turks in town due to Greek entry restrictions, robbing Kastellorizo of the two biggest groups of visitors in normal times.

During my visit, most visitors seemed to be Greeks from the mainland and a handful of Italians, who flock here because a popular Italian film (Mediterraneo) was shot on Kastellorizo, which is called ‘Castelrosso’ in Italian.


If you walk up the stairs from the port you will reach a particularly beautiful backstreet of Kastellorizo











Mosque

One of the few sights in Kastellorizo Town is the former Ottoman mosque which dates back to the late 18th Century. Nowadays the building is used as a small island museum.

Inside, you can see a couple of exhibits detailing Kastellorizo’s history and folk culture. It was interesting to see some old pictures of the island as it seemed so much more built up in those years!

Under Ottoman rule, Kastellorizo used to have the largest cargo fleet of the entire Dodecanese island chain, which contributed immensely to the island’s wealth.

Kastellorizo however lost most of its economic importance after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923.

The years which followed were not kind to the island. In 1926 an earthquake destroyed lots of buildings on Kastellorizo and in 1928 the Italians occupied the island. World War II bombardments brought even more destruction.

During Italian occupation and World War II a big chunk of Kastellorizo’s population had already fled the island – and never returned afterwards.

Coupled with mass emigration in the years following World War II, it meant that Kastellorizo never regained its peak population and feels a bit like a backwater compared to the old pictures showing a more lively and certainly much bigger port city.








Inside the mosque are some exhibits detailing the history and culture of the island.


Old pictures show how Kastellorizo looked like in the early 20th Century before the town was decimated by an earthquake and World War II.



Lycean tomb

If you walk from the mosque along the cape towards the east, you will find a nice path hugging the northern coastline of the island. From here you have lovely views over the turquoise waters of the Aegean Sea and the tiny islet of Psoradia just in front of the coast.

This path continues all the way to Mandraki, the satellite neighbourhood of Kastellorizo Town located at the other side of the hill.

If you walk the short distance from Kastellorizo Town proper to Mandraki make sure that you don’t have your eyes firmly fixed on the sea alone.

It is otherwise easy to miss the 4th Century BC Lycean tomb in the rocks on your right if you only pay attention to the sea on your left-hand side!

Although these Lycean tombs are fairly common across the water on Turkey’s Anatolian coast, they are extremely rare in Greece.








The small islet of Psoradia is just swimming distance away.


The 4th Century BC Lycian tomb with its fine Doric facade.

Castle

Another main sight on the island is the is the Castle of the Knights of St. John which is located on the hill which separates Kastellorizo Town from its sattelite neighbourhood of Mandraki.

The castle has a prime strategic location as it overlooks both the deepwater port of Kastellorizo and the more shallow fishing harbour of Mandraki.

The knights were the ones who gave Kastellorizo (Castelrosso) its name as they thought the towering red cliffs of the island resembled a castle.

Not much remains of the castle these days, although you can use the rickety metal stairs to climb to the top, from where you have great views over both Kastellorizo Town and the Turkish coast at the other side of the sea.


You can see the castle rising high above the houses of Kastellorizo Town




Not much remains of the castle these days. The biggest reason to climb all the way up are the great views.