Museums of Chios

The Chios Mastic Museum (officially Masticulture) is one of the best-designed regional museums in Greece — and it tells one of the most extraordinary stories. Chios is the only place on earth where Pistacia lentiscus trees naturally produce harvestable resin (mastic). For 2,500 years this resin has been used as medicine, chewing gum, flavouring, varnish, and perfume — and it has made Chios rich, fought over, and unique. The museum traces this history from ancient times to the modern mastic industry through interactive exhibits, original tools, and archival material.

• →The working mastic grove section — see the trees and the ancient harvesting tools side by side
• →Historical trade routes exhibition: how Chios mastic reached Ottoman sultans, Egyptian pharaohs, and medieval apothecaries
• →The modern uses room: mastic in cosmetics, surgery, pharmaceuticals, architecture — more surprising than you expect
• →Tasting station: mastic gum, mastic liqueur, mastic ice cream — all available on site

Chios has produced a disproportionate number of Greece's most powerful shipping families — Onassis family origins trace to Chios, as do several other dynasties that between them once controlled a significant share of global maritime trade. The Nautical Museum tells this story through an exceptional collection of ship models spanning centuries, navigational instruments, oil paintings of vessels at sea, maritime documents, and personal archives of Chiot shipping families. Even if you have no particular interest in ships, the sheer scale of what this island achieved at sea is remarkable.

• →Ship model collection from the 18th century to modern tankers — over 50 vessels represented
• →Original navigational instruments: sextants, compasses, charts used by Chiot captains
• →Oil paintings of historical ships in full sail — a remarkable collection rarely seen outside Athens
• →Family archives: letters, cargo manifests, and documents from Chiot shipping dynasties

The Korais Library was founded in the name of Adamantios Korais (1748–1833), a Chiot scholar who spent most of his life in Paris and is credited with standardising the modern Greek language and translating ancient Greek philosophy for 19th-century Europe — essentially the intellectual architect of the modern Greek state. The library he inspired now holds hundreds of thousands of volumes. Attached to it is the Philip Argenti Museum, which holds the private collection of Chiot historian Philip Argenti (1891–1974): Byzantine illuminated manuscripts, traditional embroidered costumes, historical maps, paintings, and documents that together form an extraordinary archive of island life across four centuries.

• →Philip Argenti Collection: Byzantine manuscripts some dating to the 12th century — exceptional and rarely publicised
• →Traditional Chios costumes: embroidered silk garments from different villages, each with distinct regional patterns
• →Historical maps of Chios from Venetian, Genoese, and Ottoman cartographers
• →Paintings depicting the 1822 Chios Massacre — the event that shocked Romantic Europe and inspired Delacroix

The Byzantine Museum of Chios occupies the Mecidiye Mosque, built in 1830 by the Ottomans inside the Kastro on the site of a Byzantine cathedral. The mosque was converted to a museum after Greek independence. The result is one of the most historically layered spaces in the Aegean: Ottoman architecture, Byzantine foundations, and a collection of Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons, carved marble reliefs, and architectural fragments spanning the 5th to 18th centuries. The building itself is as interesting as the collection.

• →Byzantine icons: portable devotional paintings from the 13th–18th centuries, many from monasteries across Chios
• →Marble reliefs and inscriptions: architectural fragments from demolished Byzantine churches
• →The mosque interior itself: the Ottoman-era mihrab and minaret alongside Byzantine decorative elements
• →Grave markers and inscriptions documenting the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim populations who lived within the Kastro walls