Vaporia and Agios Nikolaos

Vaporia is the quarter the shipowners built where the town runs out of land. The mansions are set directly on the rock, so their balconies hang over deep water and the ground floor of one house is the sea wall of the next. Between them, concrete and stone ledges have been cut into the shore as a swimming platform — Ermoupoli's beach, in effect, ten minutes from the square.

Above it stands Agios Nikolaos, a nineteenth-century church with a blue dome and two bell towers that appears in every wide shot of the district. Work the ledges from water level to stack the mansions behind you, or use the church steps and the marble terrace in front of it for a cleaner, more formal frame. The narrow streets behind hold ironwork, painted doors and shuttered windows for close-up frames.

The quarter faces east and north-east, which makes it a sunrise place: at first light the facades take colour and the sea below is glass. By eleven it is in hard sun with swimmers everywhere, and by evening the whole district is in shade. There are no railings on some of the ledges and the rock is slick where the swimmers climb out — pick your footing before you pick the pose.