The Dodecanese are far-flung from the Greek mainland and mostly hug the coast of Asia Minor. As frontier or borderline territories, their struggles to remain free and Greek have been intense and prolonged. Although they have been recognizably Greek for millennia, only in 1948 were the Dodecanese reunited with the Greek nation.

Long accustomed to watching the seas for invaders, these islands now spend their time awaiting tourists— who, like migrating birds, show up each spring and stay until October. The coming of the tourist season awakens a pattern of activity largely created and contrived for the sake of drawing and entertaining outsiders. Such is the reality of island life today. As in the past, however, the islanders proudly retain their own character even as they accommodate the onslaught of foreigners.

1/ Rhodes (Rodos)

Most Greek cities played it safe and chose a mainline god or goddess, a ranking Olympian, someone like Athena or Apollo or Artemis or Zeus himself. It’s revealing that the people of Rhodes, even then, chose Helios, the Sun, as their signature god. Indeed, millennia later, the cult of the Sun is alive and well on Rhodes, and, in return for its solar piety, the island receives on average more than 300 days of sunshine a year. What’s more, Rhodes is a place of pilgrimage for sun-worshippers from colder, darker, wetter lands around the globe. But Rhodes has more to offer its visitors than a tan. Rhodes’s unique location at the intersection of east and west ensured that it would be in the thick of commerce and conflicts. The scars left by its rich and turbulent history have become its treasures. Knights, Turks, Italians—all the island’s invaders—left behind objects of great beauty in the trail of devastation. Through it all, Rhodes remains beautiful. Its beaches are among the cleanest in the Aegean, and its interior is still home to unspoiled mountain villages, rich fertile plains—and butterflies.

2/ Kos

Kos has been inhabited for roughly 10,000 years, and has for a significant portion of that time been both an important center of commerce and a line of defense. Its population in ancient times may have reached 100,000, but today is less than a third of that number. Across the millennia, the unchallenged favorite son of the island has been Hippokrates, the father of Western medicine, who has left his mark not only on Kos but also on the world.

Today, Kos is identified with and at times nearly consumed by tourism, in which perhaps three-quarters of the island’s working people are directly engaged. The scale of demand tells you something about Kos’s beauty and attractions, which some visitors have done their best to diminish. But the island and its people have endured greater threats, and so will you, with a little determination and good advice.