I'm sure Patmos did not look like a resort island when John was banished to it. It is located on the northwestern end of a cluster of islands known as the Dodecanese. It is a rugged island of volcanic origin, and not very large—7 1/2 miles long, from north to south and 6 miles wide, from east to west—about 13 square miles in land mass.
Patmos was one of many places that Rome banished its exiles. According to early church fathers (Irenaeus, Eusebius, and Jerome), the apostle John was banished from Ephesus to Patmos in the fourteenth year of Domitian (AD 95). Domitian died in AD 96, at which time John was allowed to return to Ephesus.
Exiles to Patmos were mostly condemned to hard labor, mining minerals to be sent abroad.
John wrote the Apocalypse—Revelation—while he was in exile on Patmos. (Revelation 1:9-11)
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