Lesvos cultural information · Cultural information in Lesvos
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Cultural information in Lesvos
Cultural information in Lesvos
People of Lesbos have admired culture since the ancient times, and throughout the centuries many poets, writers, philologists, painters emerged.
Two of the famous ancient classics were the poet Sappho (whose erotic poems gave rise to the word lesbian), born in Eressos and the lyric poet Alcaeus of Mytilene, an older contemporary. A glimpse of the ancient life in Lesbos is exhibited in the new Archeological Museum of Mytilene building. Bypassing some notable people before the 19th century, the naive painter Theofilos would depict not only the lifestyle of his time, but also the ancient myths survived in the tradition; Teriade, an art critic, preserved Theofilos' work among his collection of Picasso and Matisse in his own gallery, the Teriade Museum in Varia, a suburb of Mytilene on the way south to the airport. Both museums are worth visiting.
The town of Mytilene shows architectural variety. The recent expansion to the southwest suburbs are mostly simple modern buildings; on the south way to the airport one can find a neighbourhood of old mansions, called Sourada, extended to the airport road, impossible not to be noticed; the north part called Epano Skala (meaning upper port) is the oldest, hosting one of the largest castles of the archipelago and some villas; a careful eye can notice some temples for the muslim population that used to live in the Ottoman times. The heart of the town is the market street, Ermou street, just behind the quai. While walking on this busy street, pay a visit to the baroque-style temple of Agios Therapon, a "trademark" site of Mytilene. This variety in styles is not bounded only in Mytilene; one can notice small mansions and villas (serving as public buildings usually) scattered in the villages of the whole island.
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Lesvos Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.