A beautiful Greek island once “teeming with children and shops” has been left only with bars because of tourism, a local claims.
Iosif Stefanou, an architect, urban planner and professor at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), has been closely involved with the protection of traditional Cycladic architecture on Syros for decades, and spoke to Greek outlet ekathimerini.com about how the tourism trade has sucked the life out it.
Talking to the outlet as they walked through the area, Stefanou reflected sadly that while the island’s capital Ermoupoli had formerly been “self-sufficient”, it now “only has bars. In summer, it’s crowded with people; in winter, it’s dead”, he added.
The academic once saw the island as “a model of coexistence. A mother would hear her neighbor’s baby crying and would run there first”, but houses now remain silent for months while their owners are away, he said.
“Now most houses are closed for most of the year because they’ve been bought by foreigners or Athenians,” Stefanou said.
“Fortunately, most of them respected and saved the houses. Many of the locals think about easy profit, which is why only bars have sprung up recently.
“They don’t understand they’re cutting the branch they’re sitting on. They see Mykonos on the horizon and envy it, but they don’t learn from its current state.”
Aristos Vamvakousis, a local music teacher told the outlet: “We are fighting, and as long as such efforts exist, Syros won’t become just a tourist destination.”
As well as school he teaches at, he said “there are many theatre groups, dance groups, sports clubs, and groups of people who fight to provide variety and stimuli during the months outside the summer season. That’s what saves us, life in the winter.”
Vamvakousis said people graduating from his music school find they have nowhere to play traditional music, with many rembetiko venues now closed.
“After October, you can hardly find a taverna to eat in,” he told the outlet. “The reason is that catering businesses are now owned – after the Covid pandemic – by non-locals who don’t care about keeping the shops open during the difficult months.
Syros major Alexandros Athanasiou has been approached for comment.
Go-to Greek holiday destinations like Mykonos and Santorini are among the worst affected by overtourism in the country.
Vowing to tackle overcrowding and regulate the footfall on the islands, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged in June to clamp down on the number of cruise ships permitted to call at them.
Mr Mitsotakis said the Cycladic Islands were “clearly suffering”, amid pressure from locals over the impact on their day-to-day lives and the cost of living, Bloomberg reports.
The Greek premier said Santorini, which saw some 800 cruise ships approaching its shores last year, is the “most sensitive” to overcrowding, followed by Mykonos, which in 2023 saw 750 cruise ships docking.
In April, angry protests broke out in Athens with demonstrators chanting: “They are taking our houses while they live in the Maldives”, Birmingham Live reports.
Anna Theodorakis told France24 that she was forced out of the capital’s Metaxourgio neighbourhood, explaining: “I think the answer is to go in the streets and block everything and just not do something because people are losing their homes. It is very depressing.”
Ms Theodorakis said the large numbers of Airbnbs in the city were “wiping out the traditional places” and said she felt like “a foreigner in my own country”.
Dimitri, a property developer turning a former warehouse into Airbnbs, admitted that excessive amounts of tourism were damaging Athens.
