The city of Hydra, represents a big part of the Island's quaint traditional architecture, which combines insular and land-lubber characteristics. Simple houses and manors, differentiate with a quaint, but yet impressive architecture, which is not met in other parts of Greece and abroad.

This architecture is in every way unique and someone must come and see it for himself. The Manors of Hydra stand witnesses to the economic bloomming the Island had, during the end of the 18th century. These Manors stand imposing until today and impress with their size and magnificence.

Also, they maintain their simplicity, by keeping a lot of elements from the simple, plain houses, but because of their size, they remind fortresses from the outside. All the manors of Hydra are stone made and usually they are three or four stories tall, because of the sloping ground.

Most of the Manors have got external ladders, which lead to a flat roof. They have got rooms, which are spacy and high-ceiling. These rooms have got decorations, such as wall paintings, garlands, painted wooden ceilings, door cases and geometrical drawings on the marple floor.

In the Manors there are seperated rooms for men and women, a large lounge, one iconostasis and a special room for the men to smoke nargile. The Hydraian furniture was famous for its quality and its excellent making and it gave magnificence to the imposing houses of Hydra. The Hydraian furniture were brought from the West.

The simple houses are surrounded with yards, which have got fences. The houses are plain, parallelepipeds, with roofs from tiles, eaves from porolitho and aclinic forefront. In the most houses of Hydra we also see cisterns, and marble drinking fountains.

Unique piece of decoration in these houses is the white frame around the windows, which is made from lime and it is used to counteract the gray colour stone. The main building materials of Hydra and island Dokos is the grey stone, the wood and "kokkina", an argil mortar.