Mykonos’s iconic windmills, perched along the hillside above its harbour, were built by Venetian settlers in the 16th century and used for centuries to mill wheat, harnessing the island’s notoriously strong, near-constant winds, the same Meltemi winds that once made the surrounding waters treacherous for ancient sailors. Of the original windmills, several survive today, no longer functioning for grain but preserved as one of the island’s most photographed landmarks, silhouetted against the Aegean at sunset.
The neighbourhood known as Little Venice, its pastel buildings built directly at the water’s edge, developed as merchant houses in the 18th century, positioned so close to the sea that waves sometimes splash directly against their balconies during rough weather, a deliberate architectural choice allowing merchants to load and unload goods straight from their own homes.
From Quiet Fishing Island to International Icon
Mykonos’s transformation into one of the world’s most famous nightlife and celebrity destinations began largely in the 1960s, when it attracted a wave of artists, writers, and jet-set travellers drawn to its dramatic scenery and relatively undeveloped charm at the time, a reputation that snowballed over subsequent decades into the island’s current international profile. Despite that modern fame, the island’s Chora, its main town, retains a genuinely traditional Cycladic character, whitewashed cube-shaped buildings and narrow labyrinthine streets originally designed, in part, to confuse pirates raiding the coast centuries ago.
Mykonos remains sacred in Greek mythology as the site where, according to legend, the god Zeus defeated the Titans, the island’s rocky terrain said to be formed from the petrified bodies of giants slain during that mythical battle.
Painting Windmills Against the Aegean
Mykonos’s whitewashed buildings and iconic windmills against deep Aegean blue give a watercolourist a bright, classic Greek island palette to work with. We’ve captured that light in our own Mykonos Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Greece for a wall at home.
Built by millers chasing constant wind and reinvented by a very different kind of crowd centuries later, Mykonos remains an island that has always, in one way or another, drawn people toward its edges.