Samos
— — the island that taught Pythagoras geometry.
Not only on a wall.
“A green Aegean island a mile off the Turkish coast, with Mount Kerkis rising to fourteen hundred metres at its western end and a sweet muscat wine grown on the lower slopes. Samos was the home island of Pythagoras and Epicurus and held one of the great archaic Greek sanctuaries to Hera. The harbour at Pythagoreio still uses the mole the tyrant Polycrates built in the sixth century BC.
Samos, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Samos lies in the eastern Aegean roughly 1.6 kilometres off the Turkish coast across the Mycale Strait, with a permanent population of around 33,000. The island measures about 477 square kilometres and reaches its highest point at Mount Kerkis, 1,434 metres above sea level. The capital, Vathy (Samos Town), occupies a deep bay on the north coast; the second town, Pythagoreio, sits on the south coast above an ancient harbour. Samos has produced wine since antiquity, with the sweet muscat the dominant variety today and protected under the Samos PDO.
The Heraion of Samos, the great archaic sanctuary to the goddess Hera, sat on the alluvial plain west of Pythagoreio from at least the eighth century BC. The temple Polycrates began around 530 BC was planned at 52 by 105 metres, briefly the largest in the Greek world, and one of its 155 columns still stands. The Heraion and the harbour town of Pythagoreio were inscribed jointly on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1992. The annual Heraia festival ran here for centuries as a cyclic religious calendar event.
The Mycale Strait between Samos and Turkey narrows to about 1.6 kilometres at its tightest, the closest point between the Greek and Turkish coasts in the eastern Aegean. The Tunnel of Eupalinos, dug under Mount Kastro at Pythagoreio around 530 BC, carried the town's water supply 1,036 metres through limestone and was driven from both ends to meet in the middle. It is among the earliest known engineered tunnels excavated to a geometric plan and was the work of Eupalinos of Megara.