Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
During Byzantine times the islands were inhabited only by
fishermen and by the monks and nuns in the monasteries and convents
that had been founded there, most of which at one time or another
housed emperors, empresses and patriarchs who had been exiled to
the islands. It is only since the latter half of the nineteenth century
that the Princes' Islands have become fashionable as resorts and
places to bathe and picnic. Before that they were sparsely inhabited
and rarely visited. But their picturesqueness and their rather grim
historical associations appealed to the romantic imagination of the
nineteenth century. This aspect of the islands is well preserved in a
purple passage at the beginning of Gustave Schlumberger's charming
book
Les Isles des Princes:
Naples has its Capri and its Ischia; Constantinople has its
Princes' Islands. The Neapolitan is not more proud of the
jewels which adorn his bay than is the Greek of Pera of his
charming islands, places of repose and pleasure, that raise their
enchanting silhouettes at the entrance to the Sea of Marmara.
Just as the crimes of Tiberius almost as much as the splendours
of nature have made Capri famous, so the gloomy adventures
of emperors, empresses, and all the exiles of high rank,
relegated to the convents of Proti, Antigone, and Prinkipo as a
result of the revolutions with which the history of Byzantium
bristles, have made these radiant islands one of the most tragic
sites of the ancient world… Add to these moving souvenirs
the fact that this archipelago in miniature possesses beauties
designed to ravish an eye sated with the marvels of Italy and
Sicily; that nowhere does the delighted eye repose on coasts
more lovely, on a bay more gracious, on mountainous distances
more grandiose; that nowhere is the verdure fresher or more
varied; that nowhere in short do bluer waters bathe more gently
a thousand shady coves, a thousand poetic clifs; you will then
understand why the Princes' Islands, bedewed of yore with so
many tears, vaunted today with so much praise, are a favourite
place of pilgrimage for all those who are attracted by the study
of a dramatic past or the charm of a smiling present.
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