History of the Cyclades strongest, not only for the Cyclades, but for all the Aegean islands, with over 1.5 beds per inhabitant. However, at the archipelago level, the tourist load is heavier in the Dodecanese. This is due to the fact that the islands of the Cyclades are smaller and less populated than the other islands, so the load on an individual island is stronger than for the archipelago as a whole. In the 2006 season, the Cyclades received 310,000 visitors of 11.3 million coming to Greece as a whole; the Cyclades had 1.1 million overnight stays while the country had 49.2 million—an occupancy
History of the Cyclades Ibrahim Pasha) led to an influx of people into the Cyclades, the survivors in effect becoming refugees there. In 1825, when Ibrahim Pasha landed in the Peloponnese with his Egyptian troops, a great number of refugees flooded onto Syros. The ethno-religious composition of the island and its urban structure were totally transformed as a result. The Catholic island became ever more Orthodox. The Greeks using the Greek rite moved onto the coast in what would later become the very busy port of Ermoupoli, while the Latin-rite Greeks remained on the heights of the medieval city. From the beginning of the