The mastic villages

Mastic — the aromatic resin that drips from cuts made in the bark of a particular variety of lentisk — is produced commercially nowhere in the world except the southern third of Chios. The Genoese ran the trade as a state monopoly from the fourteenth century, the Ottomans guarded it just as closely, and the twenty-odd villages that grew the crop were built as fortresses to protect it. UNESCO put the know-how of mastic cultivation on its intangible heritage list in 2014.

Mesta is the one to see first: a medieval village laid out as a single defensive block, outer houses forming a continuous wall with no windows facing out, streets so narrow and vaulted that they work as tunnels, and a church in the middle of the maze. Pyrgi, fifteen minutes away, is covered head to foot in xysta — grey-and-white geometric patterns scratched through plaster. Olympi is the quietest of the three, with a tower still standing in the middle and a show cave nearby. The Mastic Museum above Pyrgi explains the cultivation year properly.

For swimming, Mavra Volia at Emporios has black volcanic pebbles, Komi has sand, and Vroulidia at the very bottom of the island has neither crowd nor shade. Rooms here are in restored village houses rather than hotels, and the villages are forty minutes from town.