Kea

Kea, known to Greeks as Tzia, is the Cycladic island nearest to Athens, a short crossing from the Attic port of Lavrio. For that reason it has stayed the Athenians’ own: a weekend island of stone villages and oak-shaded valleys that the international circuit has never quite found.

The greenery is the first surprise. Where the rest of the Cyclades is wind-scoured rock, Kea has groves of valonia oak across its interior, whose acorns were once exported for tanning leather. Drystone walls that have held their lines since antiquity bind the terraced hillsides. The island is built of stone and tile where its neighbours are whitewashed.

Ioulida, the capital, sits inland and out of sight of the sea, a defensive habit kept from the Aegean’s centuries of pirates. Its houses climb an amphitheatre of lanes too narrow for any car. Above the village lies the Lion of Kea, an archaic stone lion cut from a single outcrop of grey rock, perhaps six centuries before Christ. It smiles out over the valley with an expression no one has ever quite explained.

Kea held four city-states in antiquity. The grandest, Karthaia, survives at the remote south-eastern tip of the island: a temple of Athena and a small theatre above an empty bay, reached only on foot or by boat. Walking is the island’s pride. A restored network of waymarked stone paths, the old kalderimia, links the ancient sites, the monasteries and the coast.

The harbours are modest. Korissia receives the ferry. Vourkari, around the bay, is the evening anchorage where the Athenian yachts tie up and the fish tavernas fill. There is no airport, and there is unlikely ever to be one. You arrive by ship from Lavrio, which is an hour from Athens by road and another hour across the water. Stay three nights, and keep a hire car for the south.

House Notes

  1. The address

    One&Only Kéa Island is the island’s one resort at scale, an all-villa retreat 45 minutes from Athens by speedboat. Ask for a Grand Seafront Villa with its own pool. Dinner is at Atria, the long afternoons at the Bond Beach Club, and the One&Only Spa runs across three levels above the sea.

  2. The Britannic

    HMHS Britannic, the Titanic’s sister ship, was lost to a mine in the Kea channel in 1916 and lies 120 metres down off the island. Scubalife runs the descent as a hypoxic technical dive, made on a low-oxygen breathing mix, for trained divers only, with the nearby liner SS Burdigala on the same expedition.

  3. Ayia Irini

    Ayia Irini was one of the great Bronze Age towns of the Cyclades, excavated in the 1960s by the University of Cincinnati under John Caskey. The shrine its excavators called House A held more than 30 near-life-size female figures in flounced Minoan dress, the best of them close to a metre tall. Its walls and lanes are open to walk.

  4. The figurines

    The Archaeological Museum of Kea in Ioulida keeps the painted clay women of Ayia Irini, figures of the Middle Cycladic period in bell-shaped skirts, unlike anything else in the islands. The same rooms hold finds from Kefala, the island’s Neolithic settlement. It is a small, serious collection that deserves an unhurried hour.

  5. Aristos

    Aristos stands on the quay at Vourkari, where the summer yachts tie up, and it is the table the island books first. Order the lobster spaghetti, with the fish soup close behind. Take a place at the water’s edge and let the evening run long; the house will hold the reservation.

  6. Red Tractor Farm

    Red Tractor Farm, a short walk above Korissia, turns the island’s oak acorns into food: acorn cookies and small-batch preserves, sold at the farm itself. Kea’s thyme honey, thick and pale gold, is sold here too, which makes the farm the considered stop for what to carry home.

  7. Kea Artisanal

    Aglaia Kremezi, the food writer, keeps a home on Kea and runs Kea Artisanal from it: small cooking days in her own kitchen and garden, built around what the island grows and cures. For a guest who wants the island’s food culture first-hand, at the stove as well as the table, this is the one to arrange.

  8. Otzias

    Otzias, on the sheltered northern bay, is the longest organised beach on the island: calm, shallow and shaded by tamarisks, the family choice when a meltemi (the strong summer north wind) roughens the open coast. Come early, take the shade at the far end and stay past the worst of the heat.

  9. Kastriani

    The monastery of Panagia Kastriani stands on a bare rock above the north coast, 12 kilometres from Ioulida, where a long stair climbs to a blue-and-white church built over an icon found on the spot. A two-storey range of cells holds guest rooms and a refectory, and a night here, high and silent above the sea, is a stay of its own kind.

  10. Ton Kalofagadon

    On the square in Ioulida, Ton Kalofagadon keeps the island’s old meat cookery, above all paspalas: pork slow-cooked with tomato, egg and cheese, a dish Kea makes and few other places do. It is the counterweight to the fish of the seafront, so come up the hill into the island’s capital and eat what the shepherds ate.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Korissia

    Korissia, which the islanders call Livadi, is the island’s port. The Municipal Port Fund of Syros keeps a facility here for private and professional yachts, small craft and traditional vessels, alongside the ferries from Lavrio, 16 miles and an hour away. Lighting, water and power reach the quay.

  2. Vourkari

    Vourkari lies round the head of the same bay. Of Kea’s two facilities, it is the harbour the Port Fund designates for yachting, the one not given over to the ferry ramp, and lighting, water and power reach its quays. A yacht that has come to stay on the island lies here.

  3. The Port Fund

    Both harbours are administered from Ermoupoli, on Syros, by the Municipal Port Fund of Syros. This public-law body covers Syros, Kea, Kythnos and Serifos together, and names exactly two places for pleasure craft on Kea. A berth at either is arranged with that office, which keeps morning and evening hours.

  4. Karthaia

    Karthaia, on the southeastern coast, is an ancient city without modern harbour facilities, reached by land only on foot, an hour or so along cobbled paths, or from the sea by small boat. Two beaches lie on either side of its hill. Above them stand the temple of Pythian Apollo and a theatre of 880 seats.

  5. Ladou

    Ladou is the small, isolated cove on the north side of Otzias, reached by footpath or by boat, and the boat is the better of the two. Nothing is organised there and nothing is sold. The island’s longest beach lies round the headland and fills by noon.

Mythology

  1. Aristaeus

    Apollonius says Aristaeus settles on Kea, builds a great altar to Zeus Ikmaios and sacrifices to Zeus and Sirius before the Dog Star rises. In the poem, the Etesian winds come in answer and cool the island for forty days.