1. Natural setting - Environment
Pserimos is located between Kos and Kalymnos. It has a good port, and relatively few ships connect it with Piraeus. In the summertime, they are more; especially those connecting it with neighboring islands. It is a mountainous island with shrub vegetation, full of self-grown caper, which it was famed for in ancient times. Pserimos is arid, and its residents occupy themselves mostly with stock raising and cultivating olive trees, since the municipality recently planted approximately 6,000 olive trees. It also has a fishing refuge. Of course, there is also the rudimentary infrastructure for the few tourists enjoying its beaches in the summer.
2. History
Pserimos, along with the surrounding islands, was included in a group of islands cited by Homer. Pliny called it Pserema. Already since the Antiquity, it was a municipality of the Commonwealth of Kos and Kalymnos, known from a resolution dating from the first half of the 3rd century A.D. A 3rd century inscription cited the name Psirimos, along with a catalogue of lords’ names from Kos; that shows the island was dependent on Kos. In Later Times, it was subjugated to the Ottoman Empire in the early 16th century as the rest of the Dodecanese, to the Italians in 1912, whereas on March 7, 1948, it was integrated into Greece.
3. Archaeological sites and monuments
In the present settlement, there are still remnants of the ancient one; namely, wall remains, shards of vessels, parts of Hellenistic altars, and some interspersed architectural parts. At the churches of Taxiarchis Michail at Letri, the Kimisis of Theotokou church (Dormition of the Virgin Mary) in the cemetery of the settlement, at Aghios Konstantinos and Panagia Grafiotisa, there are some remains of early Christian basilicas and architectural parts (columns without flutes, screens, capitals, small antae, pulpit screens, chancel screen pillars). No Byzantine or other remnants intervene between early Christian and almost modern monuments raising questions about the island’s habitation during Mediaeval Times.
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