Patmos: a blue apocalypse

A strip of barren land, dotted here and there with a few tufts of Mediterranean green; up above, a castle-fortress-monastery seems to dominate the scene, leaving behind it a trail of dazzling white little houses. Benny and I arrive on these magnificent shores on a hot, windy morning in May. Patmos enchants you at once with its whiteness, softened here and there by Greek flags, blue and white, your colours, beautiful Greece. You amazed me. This is Patmos, a small island of the Greek Dodecanese, with a shape that recalls the bow tie of a tuxedo, and two small urban centres: Skala, the port, and Hora or Chora, the village around the fortress.

Halfway along the path of the revelations stands an extraordinary site for Christians and non-believers alike: hidden among the pine woods and Mediterranean cork oaks, here is the hidden cave where the Apostle John the Evangelist is said to have received the apocalyptic revelations of the New Testament. An event later romanticised, which led to the building of the Sanctuary of the Apocalypse, or Monastery of the Apocalypse, up there, a beautiful medieval glimpse, a sacred representation of a castle of a different kind, with unexpected Byzantine mosaics reminding us that here, as elsewhere, after the Apostle came the Romans of the East and then Suleiman's Turks, and so on...

The monastery preserves intact the rooms of prayer, the small chapel, the Orthodox church, its towers and its stairways; all around it Chora or Hora, a beautiful white village, clearly enslaved to cruise tourism, but not devastating as in other places — indeed pleasantly spread among the green hills of this part of the island. Patmos really is a white pearl in a blue sea, an island that has everything to amaze and delight, beautiful in its landscapes and its beaches, a fantastic opportunity to avoid the other islands invaded by mass tourism, which here — who knows why — arrives in far smaller numbers... And thank goodness... Long live Patmos, and please don't drink coffee... it's outrageously expensive!!! Good Greece to everyone. Andrea