10-08-2025
From the Archives: The Mystical Greek Island of Patmos
'Patmos,' by Hamish Bowles, was originally published in the July 2011 issue of Vogue.
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The volcanic island of Patmos, mystic setting for Saint John's apocalyptic vision, seemed to the writer Lawrence Durrell 'more an idea than a place, more a symbol than an island.' But its powerful reality casts a spell the moment it hoves into view from a boat's deck (there is no airport), its tiny white houses scattered like snowdrops across the hillsides, a mysterious citadel crowning the hilltop village of Chora. Its true immensity is concealed in the mineral depths of the Dodecanese waters, depths suggested by the inhumanly scaled cruise ships that discharge their ruby-burned cargo onto the wharf of the port village of Skala, to disport themselves among the tourist emporia and on the town's crowded pebbled beach.
Chiara di Carcaci, left, in an Irving & Fine tunic, and her sister, Miranda, in Kate Moss for Topshop, on the terrace of their Chora house.
The island habitués are made of sterner stuff and think nothing of trekking for an hour over rocky landscapes among darting arrow snakes to reach sandy stretches shaded by tamarind trees. Meanwhile, fishermen's gaily painted craft will take one further still, to coves encircled by volcanic formations that remind one that this isle was once so inhospitable that it served as a place of banishment. Saint John was exiled to its arid wastes in the first century A.D. and promptly converted the islanders. When he refused their entreaties to stay, he assuaged their grief by retreating to a hillside cave, where he dictated his vision of the Apocalypse to his acolyte Prochoros. In the eleventh century a monastery was established on the hilltop and flowered over the centuries.
