Ferries from Symi

The amphitheatre of ochre and white houses around this harbour was built on sponges. Symi's nineteenth-century fleet worked the eastern Mediterranean beds and the money came home as neoclassical facades — and because the island's decline arrived before concrete did, the harbour front was never rebuilt.

What arrives at Gialos

From our timetable, 10 active sailings: Rhodes with 6 at about 50 minutes, and seasonal Turkish links to Datça at roughly an hour and Marmaris at around 85 minutes.

Blue Star and Dodekanisos Seaways work the Rhodes crossing. Which Rhodes harbour each departs from — and it is not the same one for scheduled ferries and excursion boats — is on the Symi guide.

⚠ The harbour front is a protected ensemble

The buildings around Gialos are preserved as a group rather than individually, which is why the waterfront has no modern intrusions and also why there is no room to expand the quay.

The practical effect is a berth that is beautiful and small: no terminal building, limited shelter, and boarding on an open quay shared with restaurant tables in season.

Four hundred boats, and then none

By the late nineteenth century Symi's sponge fleet numbered more than 400 vessels — at one point the largest in the world — working the North African beds off Benghazi and trading the catch through Syros to London. An 1883 census put the island's population above 20,000.

The Italian administration of the Dodecanese banned sponge diving during the First World War, and the island emptied. Symi covers 58.1 km² and sits 24 km north of Rhodes; the houses above this harbour still outnumber the people who live in them.

Pedi, over the ridge

The island's other bay is a working anchorage a short bus ride away, with a beach and the quieter accommodation. Small boats run from Gialos to the beaches the road does not reach — a taxi service rather than a timetabled one.

Season

The Rhodes link runs across the season with multiple daily crossings; the Turkish sailings are summer-only and thin. Winter reduces Symi to a basic lifeline service, and there is no airport to fall back on.