Arguably the most beautiful and certainly the best known of the smaller Dodecanese, Pátmos has a distinctive, immediately palpable atmosphere. It was in a cave here that St John the Divine (in Greek, O Theológos or "The Theologian"), received the New Testament's Book of Revelation and unwittingly shaped the island's destiny. The monastery honouring him, founded here in 1088 by the Blessed Khristodhoulos (1021-93), dominates Pátmos both physically - its fortified bulk towering high above everything else - and, to a considerable extent, politically. While the monks inside no longer run the island as they did for more than six centuries, their influence has nonetheless stopped Pátmos going the way of Rhodes or Kós.

 

Despite vast numbers of visitors and the island's firm presence on the cruise, hydrofoil and yacht circuits, tourism has not been allowed to take Pátmos over completely. While there is a number of clubs and even one disco around Skála, drunken rowdiness is virtually unknown, and this is one island where you do risk being ticked off for nudism on all but the most isolated beaches. Package clients have only since the 1990s begun to outnumber independent visitors, and are pretty much confined to Gríkou and a handful of larger hotels at Skála and Kámbos. Day-trippers still exceed overnighters, and Pátmos seems an altogether different place once the last cruise ship has gone at sunset. Away from Skála, development is appealingly subdued if not deliberately retarded, thanks to the absence of an airport