Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: Medieval Villages of the Mastichochoria in Chios

Chios has quite a chequered and sad history. As with all the islands in the Aegean, Chios has been occupied by the various empires; Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Genoese and Ottoman. Throughout these occupations the villagers, as villagers always do, just got on with their lives as best they could, raising their crops and herding their goats.

One of the special crops grown in the southern part of the island was Mastic. Mastic is a gum resin from the Mastic tree, an evergreen shrub that thrives in the arid, stony soil of southern Chios. This is the only place in the world where the climatic conditions are just right to produce the mastic resin. The resin has been a major trade commodity since antiquity and used in medicine, cooking, religious ceremonies and cosmetics. To protect this valuable commodity from the frequent pirate raids, the Genoese in the 13^th Century build fortified villages in the hills called Mastichochoria. These medieval villages were the main attraction for our visit to the island.

Mastic Village

Our first stop was the Mastic museum just outside the village of Pygri. This is an excellent museum with very informative and first-rate exhibits explaining the whole production of the mastic resin, its history and commercialisation. A mastic tree can live for 100 years. It starts production of resin after about 6 years with production peaking at 15 years and declines dramatically after 70 years. Peak production is only about 200 grams of resin per tree. The harvesting is all done by hand. Small incisions are made in the bark of the tree and the resin drops, ‘the tears of Chios’ are collected and cleaned in a long labour intensive and multi-stepped process.

The mastic tree

The leaves of a mastic tree

The tears of Chios

Then on to the villages. We visited two of the seven villages, Olympi and Masta. These walled downs are a labyrinth of narrow alleys and small dark houses opening up to the occasional delightful square with wonderful tavernas.

Enjoying a Chios beer and a sample of Mastika, the liqueur made from mastic

The decorative walls of the village

Insert photos

The population of the villages now is much reduced. Given the history of Chios, the villages’ survival is just short of a miracle. Although the mastic villages enjoyed special privileges during the Ottoman rule, when the island joined the Greek War of Independence in 1822, over 50,000 of Chios residents were slaughtered, another 50,000 managed to flee the carnage leaving only about 20,000 Greeks left on the island.

Delacroix's painting of the massacre at Chios

Then about 60 years later a strong earthquake destroyed many of the buildings and killed another 10,000 inhabitants. Finally in recent years several large forest fires have destroyed many of the trees. We drove through many bare hillsides with only the stumps of charred trees remaining. I didn’t take any photos. It was all too sad. I hope the resilience of the people of the Mastichochoria will ensure the tradition of mastic cultivation continues. They have survived slaughter and earthquakes but can they and the trees survive the effects of climate change??