It consists of a crescent-shaped harbor, around which is centered a strand of restaurants, shops, markets, and galleries that cater to tourists and locals (Hydriots).

Other small villages or hamlets on the island include Mandraki, Kamini, Vlychos, Palamidas, Episkopi, and Molos.

Wheeled vehicles are not permitted in the island, including but not limited to cars, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, and e-bikes.

High-speed hydrofoils and catamarans from Piraeus, some 37 nautical miles (69 km) away, serve Hydra, stopping first at Poros before going on to Spetses.

There is a passenger ferry service providing an alternative to hydrofoils that operates between Hydra Harbour to Metochi on the Peloponnese coast.

Another house, originally built for the Tsamados family on the hill overlooking the port was donated to the church to be used as a weaving school and production facility of textiles and carpets.

[12] The mansions of Lazaros and George Kountouriotis, Boudouris, Kriezis, Voulgaris, Sachinis, and Miaoulis all contain collections of 18th-century island furniture.

The monastery contains the tomb of Lazaros Kountouriotis, the richest sea captain on Hydra, who gave his entire fortune to support the Greek War of Independence.

[13] There is evidence of farmers and herders from the second half of the third millennium BCE on the small, flat areas that are not visible from the sea.

However, it appears that the island again lost its population during the Latin Empire of Constantinople as its inhabitants fled the pirate depredations.

According to this local narrative, the Arvanite Hydriots descend from the Albanians who directly left Albania as refugees in the 1460s due to persecution by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II.

Historiographical research shows that the Albanians didn't settle in Hydra directly from Albania in the 15th century, but from the Peloponnese (Ermionida) due to conflicts in the region with the Venetians and the Ottomans.

[15] They created the modern town port and their presence was evident until the mid-20th century, when, according to T. Jochalas, the majority of the island's population was composed of immigrants from outside of Peloponnesus.

One of the reasons why Arvanitika was so enduring in Hydra as opposed to other islands which were part of the Arvanite Aegean settlements was that the language was spoken and favored by the newly emerging Hydriot urban-merchant class.

At the end of the sixteenth century, there was a wave of migration consisting of big families from the Hellenic and Asia Minor regions to the island.

However, the conflict between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire limited the island's maritime development until after 1718 and the Treaty of Passarowitz.

Hydriot vessels carried goods between Southern Russia in the east and the Italian ports of Ancona and Livorno in the west.

Napoleon presented the island with the huge silver chandelier in the cathedral as a gesture of gratitude for the Hydriots' role in running the British blockade and so bringing food to France.

The mansions of the sea captains that ring the harbor are a testament to the prosperity that shipping brought to the island, which, at the time of the Greek Revolution, had 16,000 inhabitants.

The Greek admiral Andreas Miaoulis, himself a settler on Hydra, used Hydriot fire ships to inflict heavy losses on the Ottoman fleet.

Eventually the fleet of Hydra – along with those of the other two naval islands of Psara and Spetses – were able to wrest control of the eastern Aegean Sea from the Ottoman Empire.

[23] With the end of the revolution and the creation of the Greek state, the island gradually lost its maritime position in the Eastern Mediterranean, igniting an economic crisis that led to a period of hardship and unemployment.

The main reason was that with the creation of the Greek state, Hydra's fleet lost the privileges that the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca and the use of the Russian flag had given it.

[24][25] The dominant geographic features of Hydra are its rocky hillsides, which are bare, pine-forested valleys with the occasional farmhouse.

The Miaoulia Festival provides a series of cultural events in the last week in June and commemorates the victory of naval battles led by Admiral Miaouli during the Greek War of Independence.

The festival culminates with a fictionalised re-enactment at sea of the burning of an Ottoman armada followed by a spectacular firework display.

[35] In the 1950s and 1960s Hydra was the adopted home of a community of expatriate artists that included celebrated Norwegian novelist Axel Jensen, Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, and Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

This period was depicted in the 2019 documentary film Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, and Polly Samson's 2020 novel A Theatre for Dreamers.

[37] The island used to host an annual conference on Rebetiko, a type of Greek urban folk music, in mid-October.