"Patmos – the holy island o ..." a Patmos Island Travel Page by vtveen

Patmos is the most northern of the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea. It is a rather small island of about 34 square km’s with 3000 permanent inhabitants. It is rather hilly and therefore it has no airport; which means it is rather difficult to travel to Patmos, because all tourists have to use boats or ferries to reach the island.

Most of the visitors are just a couple of hours on the islands (arriving by a cruise ship) or making a day trip from one of the neighbouring islands like Kos, Leros or Samos.

Patmos has two villages: Chora (around the monastery) and Skala with the harbour (where everybody will enter the island) and a couple of tiny settlements like Grikos and Kampos. Patmos offers a lot of, sometimes remote, sandy and pebble beaches and coves. The inland is pretty rugged and has not much vegetation.

For more pictures of Patmos see flickr photopage.

Patmos is considered to be a Holy Place because St. John the Evangelist did write the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) after God spoke to him. Visitors can visit this Holy Cave of the Apocalypse where John stayed and saw the Revelation. This place is nowadays a destination for pilgrims.

Another very significant religious sight on Patmos is the Holy Monastery of St. John, on one of the highest points of the island. This impressive monastery – towering above Chora - can be seen from almost every corner on the island.

Chora with the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian and the Cave of the Apocalypse are both Unesco World Heritage sites.

Patmos has more than 400 churches and chapels, but Patmians believe there are just 365 of them, one for each day of the year. Some of them are located in the middle of nowhere or on the top of a hill. Next to the Monastery of St. John there are at least 20 monasteries (or spiritual retreats); some of them can be visited.

During our visit we tried to find out more about the ancestors of my wife (named Paleologo), who lived around the year of 1800 on Patmos. As far as we know some of them had been important ship-owners or merchants; another was abbot of the monastery.

We hoped to find more about their history in the archives and library of the monastery, but till yet the ‘harvest’ was rather disappointing. We found the Paleologo-home and did meet a lot of very friendly and helpful Patmians and they promised to do their utmost to find more about our ancestors.

We hope to see the results during a next visit, because we will go back for sure.
We love Patmos and the Patmians.

If anyone knows more about this Paleologo family from Patmos, please contact me.