For a few hundred years, money poured in from the church, which was eager to expand its influence in the Dodecanese, this group of islands so close to Turkey that on a map it looks like a jeweled choker wrapped around the country’s southwestern coast. Pilgrims seeking either enlightenment or refuge — from the fall of Constantinople, the waning influence of Crete — soon settled this island’s Chora (“town” in Greek) in the shadow of the monastery. Patmos continued to grow into the modern era as a locus of cross-cultural currents and commerce: Prosperity and geography made it ideal for seafaring, as boats brought back wooden furniture from Venice and crafts from Istanbul and Cairo. By the 15th century, both immigrants and rich merchants were building the small churches and blocky mansions that still crowd Chora’s narrow, steep pathways. Although throughout history various interlopers — pirates, Ottoman expansionists and Nazis among them — have claimed this territory as their own, Patmos has belonged to Greece since the late 1940s.

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Persons: Crete —, Patmos, Ottoman expansionists, — Locations: Turkey, Constantinople, Crete, ”, Venice, Istanbul, Cairo, Ottoman, Greece