Aegina
Aegina is a forty-minute hydrofoil from Piraeus and the easiest island day-trip in Greece. Most Athenians treat it that way: a Sunday lunch in Souvala or Perdika, a swim, and the boat back. Stay one night and the island opens up. Stay two and it lengthens into something more interesting.
The Temple of Aphaia, on a pine-clad ridge in the east of the island, was built around 500 BC and is among the best-preserved Doric temples anywhere. Its pediment sculptures, acquired by the Bavarian crown prince Ludwig in 1811, are now in the Glyptothek in Munich; what remains in situ is the architecture, which is ample. The temple is the third corner of the so-called Sacred Triangle: with the Parthenon at Athens and the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion, it forms a roughly equilateral triangle on the Saronic, each visible to the others on a clear day.
In 1828, as Greece emerged from the War of Independence, Aegina served as the seat of the first government under Ioannis Kapodistrias. The first national bank, the first newspaper, the first orphanage, and the first official coinage of the modern state all originated here before Nafplio took over the capital. The Markellos Tower in Aegina town, where the early administration met, is open to visitors. Nikos Kazantzakis later kept a house above the western coast and finished Zorba the Greek there in 1946.
Pistachios are the working economy. The PDO Aegina pistachio, with its thin shell and resinous flavour, has been cultivated on the island since the early twentieth century, and the Fistiki Fest in mid-September draws Greek visitors who come specifically for it. Perdika, on the south-western tip, is the right place for a long fish lunch with a view across the strait to the small island of Moni, uninhabited and good for an afternoon's swimming.
House Notes
Arrival
Helicopter from Athens to Aegina, around 15 minutes; AegeanVIP and iFly Air Charters serve the route. Yacht arrivals call at the town port quay for the public traffic and the carriage rank; the perimeter has smaller harbours for the ferry secondary traffic and the fishing fleet.
The address
Aeginitikon Arhontikon, a stone’s throw from the Tower of Markellos, has stood in Aegina town since 1700; the mansion acquired its neoclassical face in the early 1900s and was completely restored in 1987 by Fotis Voulgarakis. 12 rooms across two shaded inner courtyards, with ceilings painted by Milanese artists.
Agios Nektarios
The Monastery of Agios Nektarios, built in 1904 and now home to 14 nuns, holds the tomb of Saint Nektarios — canonised in 1961, decades after his death in 1920. He came to Aegina in 1908 and lived out his years here. Modest dress is the rule: no shorts, no exposed shoulders.
Paleochora
Paleochora, 7 kilometres east of the port behind the Agios Nektarios hill, was Aegina’s capital from the 9th century until 1826 — built inland to escape Saracen pirates. Of the original 366 chapels, one for each day of the year, some 38 remain, with their Byzantine frescoes intact. The setting is reminiscent of Mystras.
Kolona
Kolona is the single 8-metre Doric column of the late-archaic Temple of Apollo, beside the town port — the temple completed before the Parthenon, around the 6th century BC. The archaeological park around it holds Early- and Middle-Helladic remains, Mycenaean walls, a theatre, a stadium, and the on-site Aegina Archaeological Museum.
The first neoclassical
The Eynardeio School, built in 1830 by architects Stamatis Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert, was the first neoclassical building of the modern Greek state — and the first institution of higher education in free Greece. Funded by the Swiss banker and philhellene J.G. Eynard, a friend of Kapodistrias, under the direction of Georgios Gennadios.
The Governor’s House
The Governor’s House, a two-storey stone building near the cathedral, was built in 1803 by the Archimandrite Grigorios Moiras and renovated in 1827 to receive Ioannis Kapodistrias and the offices of the modern Greek state. His residence and the country’s government from 1828 to 1829. Now the historical archive of Aegina.
The pistachio
Tzitzis — the AEGINAI-Nuts house — has processed and packaged the PDO Aegina pistachio since 1952, the first such operation licensed in Greece. Giannis Tzitzis founded it on his own estates; his son Nikos modernised the standardisation in 1989. The trade still flows through the family at the harbour.
The Kapralos Museum
The Christos Kapralos Museum in the Plakakia district, on the coast a short way north of the town, occupies the six halls of the sculptor’s own workshop — an annex of the National Gallery since 2006. The standing work spans 1963 to 1993; the plaster cast of his 40-metre porous-stone Monument to the Battle of Pindus is the room to ask for.
The ouzeri
Skotadis, on the Aegina town port, has been the island’s ouzeri since 1945. Top-quality fish and seafood with a modern hand: fried cod with skordalia, octopus, the seafood orzo. Sit on the quay; the boats unload across from the door.