Halkidiki

Halkidiki reaches into the Aegean on three peninsulas, and each is different. Kassandra, on the western side, is the developed resort coast that most northern European package guides recommend; it is the easiest base and the busiest. Sithonia, in the middle, is the quieter, pine-forested option, with the better swimming and the smaller villages. Mount Athos, on the eastern peninsula, is a self-governing monastic republic that is closed to ordinary travel. Women may not enter at all. Men need a four-day permit (the diamonitirion) from the central pilgrim office in Thessaloniki, usually booked weeks ahead and limited to a small daily quota.

Most luxury guests should base themselves in Sithonia, near Vourvourou or Neos Marmaras, and make day trips to the rest. The eastern shore has rocky coves and small pockets of pale sand, reached on foot or by hired boat, and the swimming is among the best in mainland Greece. From this coast Athos appears as a single perfect pyramid; Mount Athos itself rises just over 2,000 metres at the southern tip. The monasteries cling to its lower slopes in a long row.

The other reasons to come are inland. In 1959 the Petralona Cave, on the slope of Mount Katsika in Kassandra, was found to hold the fossil skull of a hominid, an early human relative, dated to several hundred thousand years ago. The exact age is still disputed, but it is one of the most significant prehistoric finds in southern Europe. Aristotle was born at Stagira on the eastern coast of Halkidiki in 384 BC, and the small archaeological site there is open to visitors. The mosaic floors of ancient Olynthus, the fourth-century BC city that Philip II destroyed in 348 BC, are among the most refined in classical Greece.

The drive from Thessaloniki to the southern tip of Sithonia takes about two hours, and most travellers come through Thessaloniki rather than the smaller regional airports. Stay five nights, with a hire car. Bring shoes for the beaches and for the archaeology inland.

House Notes

  1. Porto Koufo

    Porto Koufo, on the southern tip of Sithonia, is the natural harbour Thucydides recorded: a long inlet hidden behind a narrow opening to the Aegean. German submarines used it through the Second World War for the same reason. The sound of the open sea does not enter, and the meltemi, the strong summer north wind, breaks across the headland before it reaches the water.

  2. The address

    Sani Resort, in the south of the Kassandra peninsula, is five hotels (Sani Beach, Sani Club, Sani Dunes, Porto Sani and Sani Asterias) across 1,000 acres of protected ecological reserve. The Sani Marina, at its centre, takes 215 vessels up to 33 metres, runs its own fuel station and holds the Blue Flag, the international eco-label for beaches and marinas. The resort is 40 minutes from Thessaloniki Makedonia.

  3. Eagles Palace

    Eagles Palace stands on the third finger of Halkidiki, minutes from the Athos boundary at Ouranoupoli. George and Ismini Tornivoukas built it in 1974. Their father Konstantinos had founded the Mediterranean Palace, Thessaloniki’s first luxury hotel, in 1925. The hotel keeps its own beach on the uninhabited island of Drenia, reached on day cruises by the yacht-club tender.

  4. The diamonitirion

    The diamonitirion is the entry permit for Athos, which admits 120 men a day; ten places are kept for non-Orthodox visitors. Women are not admitted at all under the avaton, the rule that bars them. Apply three to six months ahead through the Pilgrims’ Bureau in Thessaloniki, and collect the printed permit at the Ouranoupoli office on the morning of crossing. The general diamonitirion is valid for three nights, and longer stays are arranged with the host monastery.

  5. Athos, by water

    For women, and for male guests without a permit, Athos can be seen only from the sea. Athos Sea Cruises runs the Captain Fotis and the Ioanna out of Ouranoupoli twice a day, at 10.30am and 2pm. The three-hour trip follows the western coast at the 500-metre distance the avaton sets. Dochiariou, Xenophontos, Panteleimonos and Simonos Petras can be read off the rocks as the boat passes.

  6. Domaine Porto Carras

    Domaine Porto Carras has 475 hectares of organic vineyard on the western Sithonia slopes of Mount Meliton. The Greek shipowner Yiannis Carras planted it in the late 1960s under the guidance of Émile Peynaud of Bordeaux. It is the source vineyard for the Slopes of Meliton PDO, the protected wine appellation. The Meliton winery building was one of Walter Gropius’s last designs, completed after the architect’s death in 1969. The grapes are Cabernet, Limnio, Assyrtiko and Athiri.

  7. The Hondrolia

    The Hondrolia Chalkidikis is the local olive, registered by the European Commission in May 2012 as Πράσινες Ελιές Χαλκιδικής. It is the fleshiest green olive in Greece, with six times more fruit than stone. The Halkidiki plantation covers 23,000 hectares across the prefecture. The olives are picked by hand between mid-September and late October, before they turn black, and cured in sea-salt brine. The house will source the cured green grade through the village merchant on request.

  8. The Squirrel

    The Squirrel is at Danai Beach Resort, at Nikiti on northern Sithonia. It has five tables on a marble veranda beneath umbrella pines, French technique applied to Aegean ingredients, and a wine list of more than 1,600 labels. It is adults only, and reservations are essential. It is the settled fine-dining address of the middle peninsula, where the Halkidiki houses send their guests for a quiet evening.

  9. Boukadoura

    Boukadoura is the fish tavern on the Porto Koufo waterfront in south Sithonia, founded by Makis Zafirakos at the harbour edge. It serves grilled fish and shellfish from the boats that work the natural harbour, the saganaki and the seafood orzo. It is the settled kitchen of the village, and the address after a swim in the southern peninsula when the appetite runs to fish.

  10. Stagira

    Ancient Stagira, on the Liotopi headland near modern Olympiada, is Aristotle’s birthplace. Ionian colonists from Andros founded it in 655 BC, and Philip II destroyed it in 348 BC. Philip rebuilt the city in return for the philosopher’s tutoring of Alexander. After Aristotle died in Chalcis, the people of Stagira carried his ashes home and founded the Aristoteleia, a festival held in his honour.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Sani Marina

    Sani Marina is on the west of the Kassandra peninsula, a boutique marina inside the Sani Resort and the yacht harbour of the Halkidiki coast, 80 kilometres from Thessaloniki airport. Two dozen restaurants and a run of shops and galleries line the quay, with a sailing academy and a dive centre beside it. A yacht lies in the resort marina.

  2. Neos Marmaras

    Neos Marmaras is the largest village of Sithonia, built over three shoreline hills and founded in 1925 by refugees from Marmara island. Below it is the marina of Porto Carras, one of the largest resort estates in northern Greece, and the rocky islet of Kelyfos, the Turtle, sits out in the Kassandra Gulf opposite. A yacht lies off the town or in the estate harbour, in the middle of Sithonia.

  3. Vourvourou

    Vourvourou is on the east side of Sithonia, its bay scattered with the low green Diaporos islets, a chain of pine-covered islands across the gulf and the nearest thing to a lagoon on the Halkidiki coast. A yacht lies among the islets off Vourvourou, and the tender runs out to the small beaches hidden between them.

  4. Ouranoupoli

    Ouranoupoli is the last secular town on the Athos peninsula and the final harbour before the border of the monastic republic. It stands below the Prosphorion tower, raised by the emperor Andronikos II in the thirteenth century, where the writer Sydney Loch and his wife lived from 1928. A yacht lies off the town beneath the tower, at the edge of the Holy Mountain.

Mythology

  1. The Gigantomachy

    Strabo identifies the peninsula of Pallene, where Cassandreia was later built, with Phlegra, the plain the sources give as the birthplace and battlefield of the Giants. Some, he says, tell it as myth, and others as the record of a lawless tribe that Heracles broke up there, while Apollodorus gives the birthplace of the Giants as Phlegra according to some and Pallene according to others.