Some museums teach you even before you walk in

There are several settlements on Tinos that can be considered as a live museum of traditional beauty. One of these museum-like villages is Triantaros, home to a number of talented stone-builders ever since the Middle Ages. At the entrance of the village, you are greeted by the marble bust of Ambrosios Plianthidis, the bishop of Moschonisia, who was brutally executed in 1922 during the Asia Minor campaign for being an Hellene and a Christian.

A walk by the square of the southern well is like a stroll back in time. During your rest by the marble drinking fountain, you can admire the old oil-press and its equipment − the machinery, the screw and the giant cone-shaped boulder that pulped olives.

The Aeolis Tinos Suites estate, a museum of tradition in itself, is situated between the villages of Triantaros and Berdemiaros. Adjacent to the estate’s rill, the old stone-built reservoirs, a number of wine presses, the threshing floor and the plough are evidence of the old Tinian agricultural way of life. During your tour, you will have the opportunity to see the grounds where the greens were grown and you will smell the rich aroma of the lemon and orange trees still growing here.

Triantaros school, with its magnificent balcony view, holds an amazing secret, a lesson for us all: It was built in 1948 in just fifty days by the locals who, on their own, joined to offer a helping hand. What a better public anti-war and pro-civilisation demonstration than that! The Hellenic word 'σχολή' (school) is just an accent apart from the word 'σχόλη' ('leisure', literally, free time off work… with learning as the best way to spend it).

In most villages of Tinos, you will find small folkloric museums and workshops. At the Museum of Traditional Pottery at Aetofolia and the Basket-weaving Workshop at Volax, you will admire little precious beauties that decorated the locals’ day-to-day routine, from the poorest to the wealthiest of households.

At Pirgos village, you can visit the Marble Museum supported by the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP). It features marble household utensils (mortars etc.), architectural ornaments (coats of arms, corbels, lintels, drinking fountains), along with funerary stelae, as well as quarrying and marble carving tools. Next to Yannoulis Chalepas’ house lies the Panormos Artists Museum, the renowned local sculptor’s family home. Along with the artist's sculptures, there is a display of photographs, furniture and kitchen utensils used by the artist himself.

A permanent display of the artist's projects is exhibited in the Cultural Foundation of Tinos housed in the ‘Polymerio’, a 1925 reconstructed building in Chora, the island's capital.

Furthermore, in the courtyard of the Blessed Virgin’s Church, there is a gallery with a display of paintings from Tinian artists and not only. In reality, there is a plethora of attractions: the Antonios Sochos Museum with wooden and gypsum carved exhibits, the Tinian Artists Museum, the Sacristy and even the Mausoleum of RHN Elli where a large fragment of an Italian torpedo is kept; the very torpedo that sunk the Royal Hellenic Navy light cruiser on the celebrated day of the Dormition of the Mother of God in 1940.

Not too far from the main road of Chora, you can find the Archaeological Museum built in the 60’s.

The library in the Kechrovounio Monastery is also notable. It hosts a collection of over 2000 titles.

At Sklavoxorio, the famous Greek painter’s Gyzis’ family house is preserved and operated as a gallery of the personal belongings of the painter’s parents.

The Tsoclis Museum is housed at the premises of the former primary school of Kampos village. Running from the beginning of June till the end of September, it displays works by the local artist Costas Tsoclis, as well as of several other Greek and foreign artists following his artistic tradition and style. Once there, you may seize the opportunity to attend presentations and lectures from art historians, and watch movies based on the lives and works of several important artists.

The second museum of caricature and cartoon ever founded in Greece, the 'House of Sketch' (with the first established in Athens in 1994), is located at Falatados village. It remains open till the first days of September. A few smiles are never too many.