Lesvos

Tradition

Lesvos is quite well-known for the great number of its local, traditional products. As mentioned before, Lesvos is very famous for Ouzo, as it is considered one of the places it originates from. Also, Lesvos is quite famous for its pottery. Agiasos and Mandamados are the two villages that have the biggest tradition in ceramic art. Many ceramists live and work in these villages. Some of the ceramists there are Antonia Gavve( and Demetrios Hadjigiannis. Except for ceramics, woodcraft is also very developed in Lesvos.

Cultural information

People of Lesbos have admired culture since the ancient times, and throughout the centuries many poets, writers, philologists, painters emerged.

Two of the famous ancient classics were the poet Sappho whose erotic poems gave rise to the word lesbian, born in Eressos and the lyric poet Alcaeus of Mytilene, an older contemporary. A glimpse of the ancient life in Lesbos is exhibited in the new Archeological Museum of Mytilene building. Bypassing some notable people before the 19th century, the naive painter Theofilos would depict not only the lifestyle of his time, but also the ancient myths survived in the tradition; Teriade, an art critic, preserved Theofilos' work among his collection of Picasso and Matisse in his own gallery, the Teriade Museum in Varia, a suburb of Mytilene on the way south to the airport. Both museums are worth visiting.

The town of Mytilene shows architectural variety. The recent expansion to the southwest suburbs are mostly simple modern buildings; on the south way to the airport one can find a neighbourhood of old mansions, called Sourada, extended to the airport road, impossible not to be noticed; the north part called Epano Skala meaning upper port is the oldest, hosting one of the largest castles of the archipelago and some villas; a careful eye can notice some temples for the muslim population that used to live in the Ottoman times. The heart of the town is the market street, Ermou street, just behind the quai. While walking on this busy street, pay a visit to the baroque-style temple of Agios Therapon, a "trademark" site of Mytilene. This variety in styles is not bounded only in Mytilene; one can notice small mansions and villas serving as public buildings usually scattered in the villages of the whole island.

Understand

Even though they inaccurately say it is due to the erotic element in some poems by the famous Sappho, instead of Lesbos Λέσβος it is popular to refer to the island by the name of its capital town of Mytilene Μυτιλήνη. Spellings of Lesvos and Mitilini are widespread transliterations, reflecting the actual Greek pronunciation.

Of all the islands of Greece, Lesbos is only preceded in area by Crete South and Evvia Centre. However, in terms of administration, the prefecture of Lesvos comprises of three major islands, Lesbos, Lemnos at the northwest, and the tiny Agios Efstratios, located in the middle between the first two islands.

Geographically, Lesbos includes two seawater gulfs, with narrow openings both to the south, that elongate the coastline and shaping the island characteristically like a fig tree or plane tree leaf, as described by the native nobelist poet Odysseas Elytis. The landscape is different in the various regions; most striking is the contrast of the far west region, rocky with low vegetation, to the east and central parts, where olive and pine tree forests dominate. Its elevation reaches almost 1000 meters at both points: the north at mount Lepetymnos and the south at mount Olympos, a name identical to the original Olympus in Thessaly.