MYKONOS TRAVEL GUIDE

MYKONOS > HISTORY

HISTORY

The classic fable tells that the giants were destroyed by Iraklis during the War of the Giants and buried under the imposing rocky crops of Mykonos. Its name appears to declare ‘pile of stones’ or ‘petrodi place’. A later legend has the island connected with the hero Mykonos, son of the king of Delos, Aniou, who was the son of Apollo and the nymph Royous - descendant of Dionysus. The Kares and the Phoenicians are said to have been the first inhabitants of Mykonos, but the Iones from Athens were installed and dominated here around 1000 BC, evicting the previous rulers. It is reported that there were two cities on the island, Stacmevsan the Datis and Artafernis of 490 BC and that they were rather poor even though it was an agricultural island. They mainly worshipped Dionysus, Dimitra, Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune and Iraklis. The island passed from Roman to Byzantine hands when it was fortified against the Arabian pirates of the 7th century and kept the island up to the end of the 12th century.

After the fall of Constantinople, at the end of the 4th Crusade in 1204, the island was occupied, as their seigneur (stronghold) by Andrea and Jeremia Gizi – relatives of Dandolo, the Doge of Venice. In 1292, it was looted and pillaged by the Catalans, and, subsequently, in 1390, given over to the Venetians by the last of the Gizi overlords. In 1537, while still under Venetian domination, the island suffered a catastrophic attack by Barbarossa, the admiral of Souliman the Magnificent in 1537. Later, under Kapudan Pasha, the head of the Ottoman fleet, the island was practically self-governed, according to the system of the period, by a functionary called a ‘voivode’ and a council body of ‘syndics’, who always tried to maintain an equal distance from both the Turks and the Venetians the last of whom withdrew definitively from the region in 1718, after the fall of the castle. The population of Mykonos that varies, in modern times, between 2,000 and 5,000 people was strengthened, from Crete or the nearer islands of Naxos, Folegandros, Sikino, Kimolo etc), after famines and epidemics, which were followed by conflicts until the late 18th century. The islanders were known throughout the same period as excellent sailors involved in trade and shipping and, because of its geographic location, to supply foreign commercial ships.

Many islanders were active in the Orlof Insurrection led by the Orloff brothers, in 1770-74, which resulted favourably, for them as well as for Catherine the Great, due to the very profitable treaties concerning trade between the Ottomans and the Russian Empire.

Soon after the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in 1821, the Mykonians, rebelled and led by the Lady Mando Mavrogenous, an aristocrat educated with the most fervent ideas of Enlightment, who become a popular national heroine, successfully impeded the landing of a squadron of the Ottoman fleet in 1822. They participated actively in the war, with four armed ships (two of which were totally fitted out and supplied at Lady Mando’s expense; before the war was over she had spent almost all of her considerable family fortune).

After the establishment of the modern Greek State, the activity of the local upper and lower-middle classes revived the island economy through the consolidation of trade relations with southern Russia: Odessa-Crimea, Livorno - Italy, Marseilles - France as well as Alexandria, Smyrna, Constantinople and developing Syria. Their predominance was reduced by the age of steam and this was further reduced by the opening of the Corinth Canal in 1904. The upheavals of WWI resulted in a depression of the local economy; many Mykonians left to find work abroad, mainly in the USA and to centres of mainland Greece such as Piraeus and Athens. The development of tourism in the following decades has provided the means for the islands’ economic development.

The prolonged excavations by the Athenian French School of Archaeology, begun in Dilos in 1873, focused attention on the region for the fortunate few that had the means and the opportunity to travel and were attracted by the charms of classical Greece. By the early 1930s many famous artists, politicians and wealthy people, mainly from Europe, began spending their vacations on the island attracted by its unique atmosphere. Mykonos has adapted well to the post-war demands with the gradual growth of the tourism industry in southern Europe. The island has become a cosmopolitan locale and is one of the most successful growth models of its type and scale in Europe.