Alonissos

Alonissos takes effort to reach. Most travellers fly to Skiathos, take a ferry to Skopelos, then another ferry on, and the journey takes most of a day. That limits who comes, and it is part of why the island has changed less than its busier neighbours.

The surrounding waters were declared the National Marine Park of Alonissos and the Northern Sporades in 1992. It is Greece’s first marine park and one of the largest in the Mediterranean. Its caves and uninhabited islets shelter what is probably the most important breeding population of the Mediterranean monk seal, Monachus monachus. The species is estimated to number under 1,000 worldwide. Glass-bottom boat trips from Patitiri, the main port, run through the summer. Landing on most of the smaller islands is restricted by zone. Do not expect to see seals close up, because they have learned to avoid people.

The inhabited part of the island is small. Old Alonissos, the hilltop capital, was largely abandoned after the 1965 earthquake, when its residents were rehoused at the new port of Patitiri below. Over the past three decades the village has been bought up, restored and lived in again, as a settlement of stone houses and a handful of small pensioni (guesthouses). The walk up from Patitiri takes around 40 minutes; the road is faster.

In 1985 divers identified a wreck off the islet of Peristera carrying a cargo of fifth-century BC amphorae, ancient clay storage jars. It is now Greece’s first underwater archaeological site open to the public. Recreational divers can visit with a guide, and non-divers can see it through a virtual exhibit at the Patitiri museum. Stay three nights, with at least one full day on the water, and aim for May or late September.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Fly from Athens to Skiathos, then go on by sea. Through the summer, the SeaJets catamaran Eagle Jet 2 and the Aegean Flying Dolphins hydrofoil Erato run from Skiathos to Skopelos and on to Alonissos. They carry passengers only, and the trip takes the better part of two hours. Hellenic Seaways calls all year from Volos.

  2. The address

    Liadromia at Patitiri is the hotel address to choose. It has 14 rooms and six studios in a renovated stone cottage above the port, is run by a family, and looks across the harbour to the bay. For a private villa, Alonissos Poikilma at Raches has four houses (Thalassa, Ouranos, Petra, Elia), each with a private infinity pool and a view across the pines to the sea.

  3. Tassia’s

    At the small port of Steni Vala, Tassia’s has been the family kitchen since Paul and Nausika Drossakis opened it. Their son Stamatis runs it now. The signature dish is astakomakaronada, lobster with spaghetti, to the founder’s recipe; the scorpion fish in lemon is the kitchen’s quieter pride. The family brings in the fish each night, and the menu turns on what the boat has brought.

  4. The Underwater Museum

    The Alonissos Underwater Museum opened to the public in August 2020 as the first in Greece. It lies at 25 metres’ depth off the islet of Peristera: a 30-metre merchant ship of the Classical era, dated 425 to 420 BC, with around 3,000 amphorae, clay jars that once carried the wines of Mende and Peparithos. Recreational divers go down with a guide, and non-divers see the wreck through the shore museum at Patitiri. It is called the “Parthenon of Shipwrecks”.

  5. The seals

    The 2026 census in the National Marine Park of Alonissos and the Northern Sporades identified 21 newborn Mediterranean monk seals by photograph, chiefly on the islet of Piperi. It was the highest count in nearly four decades of monitoring. Greece now holds about half the world’s Monachus monachus population. MOm, the Hellenic Society, runs its rehabilitation centre for orphaned and injured seals from Alonissos.

  6. The trail

    The Alonissos trail network has 14 signposted routes across 35 kilometres. They run from coastal paths under Aleppo pine to the climb of Mount Kalovoulos, the southern cape, which rises 325 metres above the sea. The routes range from easy to hard, and only one is graded hard. For guests with one full day, the path from Patitiri to Old Alonissos is the walk to take.

  7. The beaches

    Chrissi Milia, the “golden apple tree”, is the family beach on the east coast, with soft sand under pine. Megalos Mourtias, 5 kilometres from Patitiri, is the pebble cove the islanders swim from. It stays calm in most winds. Vrysitsa is reached by a footpath of a kilometre down from Old Alonissos, with sand at the bottom and no road to it.

  8. Kokkinokastro

    Kokkinokastro, the “red castle”, is the cliff and cove where ancient Ikos stood, one of two cities of the island in the Classical period, on the same peninsula. The ochre cliffs above mark the headland. The city’s fortification walls survive on land, and the ground has sunk over time, carrying parts of the peninsula under shallow water. Bronze Age pottery has been found on the slope above.

  9. Steni Vala

    Steni Vala, a small natural port on the east coast, is the island’s working fishing village. It faces the islet of Peristera and is the overnight stop for sailing yachts touring the Sporades. The kitchens above it serve the day’s catch, and the harbour remains the village’s own harbour rather than a resort’s marina.

  10. The Mavrikis Museum

    The Historical and Folklore Museum at Patitiri is the largest private museum in island Greece. Konstantinos and Angela Mavrikis founded it in 2001 in a stone house above the harbour. The ground floor holds the amphorae and the maritime collection. The basement holds the folk collection: costumes, beekeeping tools and an olive press. It is a serious counterweight to afternoons on the beach and the boat.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Patitiri

    Patitiri is the main port of Alonissos, on the southeast coast. The islanders built the town when the earthquake of 1965 drove them down from the old hilltop village, and the ferries, catamarans and hydrofoils from the mainland and the other Sporades all come in here. A yacht lies in the working harbour, with the new houses rising in tiers above it and the whole of the Marine Park’s water opening to the north.

  2. Kyra Panagia

    Kyra Panagia is the Marine Park islet north of the town, with the bay of Agios Petros cut into its southwest coast. Mount Athos has held the island since 963, when the emperor Nikephoros Phokas granted it to the Megisti Lavra monastery, and the monastery on the east coast, renovated in 2017, keeps a single monk. A yacht lies off it for the harbour and the silence.

  3. Gioura

    Gioura lies in Zone A, the strictly protected heart of the Marine Park: an uninhabited island whose Cyclops Cave, the largest in the Sporades, was used from the Mesolithic to the late Neolithic (the Middle to the late New Stone Age). A yacht comes here to see the island, and does not land. The northern islets are the seals’ water, and a guest crosses to them under the rules of the protected zone.

  4. Psathoura

    Psathoura is the northernmost of the Park’s islands, low and volcanic, marked by a lighthouse of 1895 nearly 30 metres tall, among the tallest in the Aegean. Here a yacht reaches the far edge of the Alonissos water, the last land before the open north Aegean, with nothing on it but the pale shore and the tower.