Mytilini rewards slow exploration. The Castle looms over the northern harbour, and the Ottoman-era market quarter — full of old workshops and covered passages — repays an unhurried wander. Museums here punch well above the city's size: a world-class collection of archaic mosaics, the paintings of the naive master Theophilos, and a great modern-art museum assembled by a Paris art dealer who grew up here. Ouzo was invented on this island; sipping a glass on the waterfront while watching a ferry ease into port is practically a civic duty.