Vigla of Cape Vamvakas

The Vigla of Cape Vamvakas stands on the north-eastern coast of Chios, near Kardamyla, where it once commanded the Arginousa strait and watched over shipping from the north-western coast of Asia Minor. Built around the fifteenth century by the Genoese, who then ruled the island, this watchtower has fared rather poorly compared with most of Chios’s other viglas. Its condition today is decidedly ruinous, with little of its original form clearly legible. Below the cape lies the small rocky islet of Strovili, which carries a few scant remains of a second, separate watchtower. Together the two positions suggest a careful chain of surveillance along this exposed shore, though time and weather have left both in a state closer to scattered rubble than standing fortification. For the visitor with an interest in the island’s defensive network, the site rewards a patient eye, but it offers no grand silhouette, only the quiet evidence of a strategic past.