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“My first visit to Mykonos was in the summer of 1955. resources, supplemented with revenue from exports and
From the vantage point of those days on that magical quiet caique trading, and remittances from seamen and emigrants.
island with one 12 passenger bus and a plethora of donkeys How incredibly lucky I was to see it in those days when it was
it was absolutely inconceivable what would happen over the still just on the threshold of such dramatic change.
ensuing 60 years. On the day I arrived there were some 15 A few hours after I arrived I wrote a letter to my parents in
visitors on the island. In 2018 on a typical summer day the New York and dispatched it at the post office, I told them
island expects between 120,000 and 140,000 visitors. I had found the most beautiful place on earth and even if
So in 1955 here was a small exceptionally beautiful island with they came directly from the United States on a ship with the
its one small aforementioned bus, little electricity, no cars, no shades drawn and saw nothing else either coming or going
motorbikes, no running water, no tractors, no TV, no internet, that it would be worthwhile to come and see just Mykonos.
no airport, no dock, and essentially no tourists. But artists and I know this must sound made up today but it is true. If you
writers had already identified Mykonos as a special place some don’t believe me I will try to find the letter. I had visited
decades before my first visit. There were many reasons for many Aegean islands the prior summer, so I was in a
this. One was the beauty of the architecture of Chora and its position to calibrate Mykonos against other islands.
extraordinary setting directly on the sea. Most Choras -island This year Mykonos is expecting two million visitors. One
main villages- are built in the hills hidden from view from senses there’s been a huge explosion - an explosion of
the sea so pirates wouldn’t get interested. But the Mykonians houses, of cars, of tour buses, of motorbikes, of villas, of
-either audaciously unafraid of pirates or (excuse me) because roads, of people from all over the universe. That incredible
they were among the pirates- built directly on the sea - some magnificent little village by the sea has become a huge
houses so close that a captain could disembark directly into shopping center on the sea, with virtually every retailer

MYKONOS WAS LIKE AN INDEPENDENT ISLAND PRINCIPALITY,
WITH ITS OWN CULTURE, ITS OWN DANCES, CUISINE,
ARCHITECTURE, LANGUAGE.

his living room. There were other unique attractions too: the you can name present. But where is the bakery, where are
warmth and hospitality of its people -still so strong today. And the blacksmiths, where are the caiques, and the donkeys?
the beaches, with unusually fine sand for the Aegean. And the Outside of Chora the landscape is dense with villas. This is
proximity to Delos, a unique and important archaeological progress of its own sort, and the economist in us applauds
site. And the unspoiled landscape with its spectacular rock the enormous economic success of the island, the envy of
formations and its generations of hard-won terracing, created its Aegean neighbors.
to expand and maintain a family’s agricultural resources. History is repeating itself. Delos had been a great and
Mykonos was like an independent island principality, with its renowned international commercial center in antiquity.
own culture, its own dances, songs, poetry, cuisine, textiles, Mykonos has today taken up the mantle of its tiny ancient
architecture, even language. All of this had evolved and been neighbor. The island has reinvented itself as a happy,
carefully honed over a period of thousands of years, through fashionable place for people to shop, vacation, party, dine,
wars, occupations, drought, and other calamities. You cannot relax by the sea (in €100 lounge beds with an umbrella).
underestimate the isolation of these Aegean islands in the age They shop surrounded by some of the most beautiful
of sail and how unique and distinctive cultures evolved there. architecture in the world. Yet we know in our hearts that
It is not an exaggeration to say that life in Mykonos has something has been lost.
changed more in these past 60 years than it did in the prior In the period after the war people had already started
3000 years. It was a place with limited agricultural potential, to move out of the Aegean islands, seeking work on the
little water, good fishing, and very little in the way of natural mainland or abroad. Houses were sometimes abandoned
resources. It represented in a way an undisturbed example when families emigrated. So development and tourism have
of a very carefully polished self sufficient Aegean civilization. saved some island villages from decay and abandonment,
It was living in equilibrium with its land, water, and sea and they have given employment to the local population

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