Overview

Lesbos has a predominantly rural character, uncommon for an Aegean island. The central valleys and slopes carpeted as far as the eye can see with olive trees, the unusually tranquil waters of its two sea-gulfs that flood the heart of the island like large lakes, the self-sufficiency of its stately villages and the relative beneficence of its mountain peaks all contribute to give the island a feel of domesticity, spaciousness and calm. From Antiquity, Lesbos has less to show than its neighbours: the beautiful Hellenistic mosaic floors, exhibited in the New Archaeological Museum, are for the visitor its most vivid relic. But from the Middle Ages on, its heritage is rich: Byzantine rural churches, important monasteries, many Ottoman buildings and, most conspicuous and widespread of all, the beauty and rich diversity of its villages. The hot waters of Lesbos are one of the island's greatest and most unusual attractions.

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9781907859106

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Reviews of McGilchrist's Greek Islands: Delightful, well-observed, literary accompaniments to the Greek islands, by a British scholar.A The Economist,Books of the Year 2010 So evocative and informative, one hardly needs to go... Lovely...A Bettany Hughes, Sunday Herald - Books of the Year2010 A remarkable achievement - a complete, island by island, 3,000 page survey of all the historical monuments in the Aegean...A Barnaby Rogerson, Country Life Wonderful... superbly structured; immense learning elegantly, unobtrusively offered; and outstandingly well writtenA Prof. Jon Stallworthy, Wolfson College, Oxford

Author Information

Nigel McGilchrist lectures widely in art and archaeology at museums and institutions both in Europe and in the United States. He was Director of the Anglo-Italian Institute in Rome for six years, taught at the University of Rome, for the University of Massachusetts and was for seven years Dean of the joint Faculty of European Studies for a consortium of American Universities and Colleges. In recent years he has been lecturing at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California. Over the last six years he has walked every path and village of the sixty inhabited Greek Aegean islands in order to prepare the twenty volumes of McGilchrist's Greek Islands. He lives near Orvieto in Italy where he produces olive oil and red wine.

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