Sightseeing in Kos

Kos is an island where medicine is older than Christianity. Four kilometres from town lies the Asklepion, the sanctuary of the god of healing: three terraces on a slope, curative springs, porticoes for patients. A school worked here, and Hippocrates came out of it; in town there still stands a plane tree that carries his name — the tree is younger, of course, but the place is the same. Beside the harbour looms the fortress of the Knights Hospitaller, and between them lies the ancient agora, excavated after the earthquake of 1933, along with the Defterdar mosque from Ottoman times.

The island is flat and small, so a sightseeing day covers all of it: hill villages on the slopes of Dikeos, Kefalos at the western tip above Cavo Paradiso bay, old olive presses and stops at tavernas that cook what they grow. The jeep safari leaves the asphalt for dirt tracks, abandoned settlements and viewpoints from which the Turkish shore is visible — it lies a couple of kilometres away.

The neighbours here are closer than your own beaches. Boats go to Nisyros for the active volcano: you walk down into its caldera, the ground warm underfoot and the air smelling of sulphur. Kalymnos and Pserimos make a day cruise with swimming, the first known for its sponge divers. And Bodrum, on the Turkish side, is forty-five minutes away by ferry — a trip of its own, with another country inside a single day.