"Symi Town" a Symi Travel Page by steventilly

Symi Town is the main town on Symi Island - in fact it's the only real town.
To me it's one of the wonders of the world, a beautiful natural harbour surrounded by hills on which are built the most beautiful and colourful houses and churches.
The harbourside is lined with attractive tavernas and bars and takes on an even more magical air at night - in fact the whole town does. For one thing, it gets a lot quieter at this time and takes on a different atmosphere. This is because the day trippers are all gone by then and the locals are no longer outnumbered by visitors.
There are no high rise developments at all, and mass tourism just doesn't exist, but there is a kind of core of people who know and love Symi and come back year after year, and these people seem to know each other and everyone knows them, such is the friendliness and intimacy of the place.

The town has 2 main parts, the port and the old town. The port or lower area is known as Yialos and the upper or old town is known as Chorio (both of these spellings can vary, according to where you look).
Yialos is a quite cosmopolitan harbour town, having a bit of the feel of the French or Italian Riviera, or at least of the quieter parts of those areas. There are bars and cafes and shops around the harbour, and hotels and B&Bs discretely tucked away too. Yachts fight for a berth in the harbour and ferries and cruise ships pay regular visits too.

Chorio is at the top of a long street of marble steps (over 350 of them) known as the Kali Strata. Most of the lovely neo-classical mansion houses are built alongside this street, and many of them are ruined or semi-ruined, but even these are attractive in their own way.
Chorio has a totally different feel to Yialos, feeling much more "local" and a lot less cosmopolitan. It's also not filled with daytrippers - maybe the climb is too much for them, or maybe they don't even know about it. I'd advise you to take a look up here though. It's lovely, and is a complete maze of streets, some filled with ruins, some with lovely mansions, some with a square and maybe a shop or taverna, and some with chickens roaming about freely. There's also a lot of churches and a row of windmills up here.