The Gialos harbour amphitheatre

Gialos is the arrival, and the arrival is the picture. The port is a tight curve of water closed by neoclassical houses stacked three and four deep up the slope — ochre, cream, dusty pink and washed blue, with pediments, shutters and iron balconies — built on sponge-diving and shipbuilding money and protected today as a listed settlement, which is why there is no concrete block breaking the line.

Work the quay itself rather than a viewpoint. Standing on the north side you get the western tier lit and the boats as a foreground; from the ferry mole the whole amphitheatre fits a normal lens. The nineteenth-century clocktower at the harbour mouth gives a second, cleaner frame with sea behind it.

The harbour opens roughly north-east, so it takes clean light early and stays soft afterwards. The catch is traffic of a different kind: day boats from Rhodes tie up from late morning to mid-afternoon and the quay fills with tables and people. Before ten and after five it is a working port again.