Flavours and culture on the Cycladic island where urban spirit meets the island vibes
Syros is one of those places you don’t just look at – it keeps telling you stories. Every façade is a different era, every marble staircase a narrative of merchants, refugees, seafarers, Catholics and Orthodox who chose to build, right in the middle of the Aegean, a truly urban capital. Ermoupoli, even if it no longer moves at the pace of the 19th century, is still the most “European” town in the Cyclades: broad stairways, arcades, townhouses with plaster ornaments, baroque and neoclassical details that still stand proudly in front of the sea.
Wherever you turn you see the Western influences that came with the island’s Frankish and Venetian past. At the centre of it all rises the Town Hall – Ernst Ziller’s masterpiece – with its monumental staircase, arcades and patio that today house the municipality and the courts; it’s the first thing that catches your eye on Miaouli Square and reminds you that Syros was once the commercial hub of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Just a few steps away, in the same urban ensemble, stand the imposing Church of St. Nicholas and the Apollon Theatre, a delicate miniature of La Scala in Milan, with historic ceiling paintings and the feeling that you’ve stepped into a 19th-century Italian opera house. It is one of the very few neoclassical theatres in Greece that are still in use – proof of how cultivated this town was so early on.
The line-up of neoclassicals continues with the Cultural Centre of the Municipality of Syros–Ermoupoli (1863, also under Pietro Sampo): a strict façade, columns, marble elements, high-ceilinged rooms that today host exhibitions, literary evenings and concerts. It is the city’s cultural core.
And just as you’re wandering through the narrow lanes of the cosmopolitan Vaporia quarter, you pass by Villa Selena and, almost without realising it, you emerge on the open sea side at Asteria, with the concrete platform that’s perfect for diving straight into the water. It’s only a few steps down from the street and it gives you a full view of Ermoupoli’s neoclassical facades.
Higher up, in Vrontados, the “Kyveli” House –an 1870 bourgeois residence literally embraced by the rock, overlooking the harbour– functions as an institute and memory space for the legendary actress. Down on the north quay, the Cyclades Gallery, designed by the Bavarian architect Johann Erlacher, recalls the very first public buildings of Ermoupoli, when the town was being built with European self-confidence. And, of course, the Prasakakis Mansion –one of the first private mansions of Ermoupoli, also attributed to Erlacher– with its marble staircases and painted ceilings, today home to the Cyclades Chamber of Commerce, is one of those houses that make it obvious a real urban class once lived here.
That urban class –the Syros merchant families, people with education and European references, Catholics and Orthodox living side by side– left behind something very alive: a town that doesn’t go to sleep in winter. Syros today has eight (!) amateur theatre groups, music ensembles, reading clubs – a winter cultural life that very few islands can claim. It’s how the people of Syros keep their town “high” even when there are no visitors.
Step outside the town and climb to Ano Syros, the island’s Catholic quarter, with its uphill Cycladic lanes, vaulted passages that look almost medieval and balconies gazing over the harbour. Here, in the courtyards and little cafés, you’re reminded that Syros also has its “franco-Syrian” identity, with music, with the rebetiko of Markos Vamvakaris, with songs that were born right on those thresholds.
A little further north, in the village of San Michalis, sunset is simply magical: you don’t just see sea, you see terraces, drystone landscapes, donkeys in the fields – a softer, everyday, rural side of Syros you don’t expect when you stroll through Miaouli Square.
Gastronomy of Syros, like the town itself, is the product of many currents. From Chios and Asia Minor came the loukoumi, now inseparable from the island’s identity, from Smyrna the spices, from the Catholic monasteries the prickly pears and almond sweets. The island has excellent local produce: Syros cheeses and louza, the spicy San Michalis (PDO since 1996), kid goat, garden vegetables. For shopping: Prekas and Leivadaras for local goods, the Sykoutris loukoumi workshop for classic and mastic-scented sweets, and of course the well-known Syros rusks that go with everything.
For food, it’s worth stopping at “Syriani Kouzina” for homestyle dishes, at “O Mitsos” for meat, and at the old café “I Nisiotissa” in the lane of Ermoupoli, where in 2025 the ERT (National TV) series “The Great Chimera” was partly filmed (the eponymous novel by M. Karagatsis has strong links to Syros, since that cosmopolitan, Greco-Italian, island atmosphere he describes is very close to the spirit of Ermoupoli’s merchant class).
Chef Lefteris Volikakis sends out meze for tsipouro in a genuinely Syros alley, with painted tables and wooden chairs – a set that needs no set design. For drinks, Bar Passo (right on the paved street) is open even in winter, while for wine and a slower night there is Roga wine bar. For something quick and comforting late at night, Apolafsi does the job.
What truly makes Syros stand apart is not only that it has “beautiful buildings”. It’s that it has layers of urban life – refugee memory, Catholic tradition, industrial growth, neoclassical vision – and has kept them alive. In a single day you can walk through the Cultural Centre, step inside the Apollon Theatre, look up at the painted ceilings of its neoclassicals and end your evening in Ano Syros listening to bouzouki. It’s a town that reminds you the Cyclades are not just white cubes on a rock, but living monuments of culture – and an Aegean beauty that’s hard to put into words.
