Kythira

Kythira lies in the open sea off Cape Maleas, the southern tip of the Peloponnese, where the Ionian and Aegean waters meet. Officially it is one of the seven Ionian Islands, but it is a long way from Corfu and Paxos. In practice you reach it from Athens or the Laconian coast. It has always been a little apart, and that is the first thing to understand about it.

In myth the island is the birthplace of Aphrodite, who rose from the sea foam off its shores before going on to Cyprus. Hesiod calls her Kythereia. The idea of Kythira as the island of love runs on through Watteau’s Embarkation for Cythera and Baudelaire’s bitter Un voyage à Cythère. The Venetians held the island for much of four centuries and called it Cerigo. They left the deeper physical mark: the Venier family, the kastro, or castle, above the capital and a scatter of fortifications around the coast.

Chora, the capital, is a white town strung along a ridge below its Venetian fortress. It looks down on the twin coves of Kapsali at the island’s southern foot. The architecture is its own, close to neither the Cycladic nor the Ionian: flat-roofed white houses, an occasional carved Venetian doorway, and a stillness the busier islands lost decades ago. Below, Kapsali’s double bay has the swimming and the evening tavernas.

The interior repays a hire car. Mylopotamos, in a green fold on the western side, keeps its old watermills and a waterfall among the plane trees. The abandoned Venetian hamlet of Kato Chora and the sea-cave church of Agia Sofia lie just beyond. On the east coast, Avlemonas is a miniature stone harbour around a small Venetian fort. It is near the headland of Palaiokastro, where a Minoan peak sanctuary once stood, the oldest Aegean presence on the island. The beaches are small and scattered: Kaladi, Halkos and the pale strand at Diakofti.

Kythira sent more of its people abroad than almost any other Greek island. The cafés of Sydney were largely Kytherian, and the bond with Australia remains close. The island has a small airport with flights from Athens. Ferries run to Diakofti from Neapoli on the Laconian mainland and, less often, from Piraeus. The rusting wreck of the Nordland still sits on the reef off the port. Take four or five nights, unhurried, with a car and no fixed plan.

House Notes

  1. The address

    High in the Chora, at the entrance to the kastro (the castle), Nostos is the old manor of Father Samuel, a two-storey Venetian house with the archway of the old town, restored by one family as a seven-room guesthouse. The rooms carry the names of the winds, Maistros, Ostria and Levantes. Ask for one that looks down on the sea.

  2. Platanos

    On the plane-shaded square at Mylopotamos, the Platanos has kept its tables under the same trees for 100 years. Inside are the original patterned floor tiles and a painted wooden ceiling, and in summer the kitchen turns to the recipes of Kythira, cooked as at home. It is the village’s living room, and the right place for a long lunch on a hot day.

  3. The honey

    Kythira’s thyme honey is the island’s one great export, and the Agricultural Beekeeping Cooperative at Aroniadika, where beekeepers have worked together since 1996, is the way to buy it at source. The yield is small, a few tonnes a year, drawn from thyme and the wild herbs of the hills. A standardised jar can be set aside, or you can visit the cooperative’s rooms at Fratsia.

  4. Myrtidia

    The monastery of Panagia Myrtidiotissa, above the sea on the quiet west coast, holds the icon a shepherd is said to have found in the 13th century among the myrtle bushes that gave it its name. A monk, Leontios, built the first church around it, and the Virgin of the Myrtles has been the patroness of all Kytherians since. Come on an ordinary morning, when the courtyard is empty.

  5. Paleochora

    Hidden in a ravine in the north, Paleochora was the island’s medieval capital, founded by people from Monemvasia in the 12th century as Agios Dimitrios and walled against pirates; it is known as the Mystras of Kythira. In 1537 the corsair Barbarossa took it, enslaved its people and left it for dead, and it has stood empty ever since. The Byzantine shells of Agios Theodoros and Panagia Faneromeni still keep their frescoes.

  6. The bridge

    Below Kato Livadi stands the Katouni bridge, at 110 metres the longest stone bridge in Greece: a long line of stone arches built across the valley during the British occupation, when Kythira was a Crown protectorate and the Ionian road-builders were at work. It spans no great river but carried the road east, and it is still the island’s grandest piece of nineteenth-century engineering.

  7. The lighthouse

    At Cape Spathi, the island’s northern tip, the Moudari lighthouse has stood since 1857: built by the English, 25 metres of pale stone, among the largest the British raised in Greece. A footpath of some 400 metres leads to it past Platia Ammos, and from its foot the Peloponnese and the whole shipping channel open out. Walk it late, for the light off the strait.

  8. Hytra, by boat

    Off the south coast, beyond Kapsali, lies the bare rock of Hytra, Chytra on the charts, whose sea caves a boat can nose into on a calm day. Kythira Cruises runs the Gerakari, a 10-metre launch built in 2020, from Kapsali to swim in the cave’s clear water and round the islet at dusk. The day depends wholly on the wind, so keep the plan loose.

  9. Limnionas

    On the west coast below Mylopotamos, Limnionas is a small sandy cove with a single canteen and a row of old stone boathouses, their wide doors cut for the fishermen’s caïques. It is reached by the road down from the village, or by boat from Kapsali. From the sand a marked path climbs to the baths of Aphrodite, the rock pools above the shore.

  10. Amir Ali

    Above Karavas, in the green north of the island, the spring of Amir Ali rises among centuries-old plane trees, laurels and myrtles, a cool, running oasis in a dry land. This is the Orange Spring of song, where local tradition set a single orange tree so vast that five people could not reach round its trunk. Sit by the water with the village above you; few places on Kythira are this shaded.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Kapsali

    Kapsali is the double bay below the Chora, the island’s capital: two crescents of pebble and sand under the Venetian fortress at the top of the town. It is the island’s principal summer harbour, with cafés and tavernas along the waterfront. A yacht lies here under the castle, which is lit in the evening.

  2. Diakofti

    Diakofti, on the east coast, is the island’s modern port. The British chose the site in the nineteenth century, it was rebuilt in the 1990s for the ferries, and the boats from Gythio, Kalamata, Piraeus, Crete and Antikythera all call here. A yacht lies at this working harbour, the main way into Kythira from the sea.

  3. Avlemonas

    Avlemonas is a village of whitewashed houses around the rocks of a small, fjord-like inlet on the east coast, where a little Venetian fort still guards the harbour mouth. There is no beach, and swimmers enter the clear water from ladders cut into the stone. A yacht stays here for a while rather than passing by.

  4. Agia Pelagia

    Agia Pelagia, on the north coast, was the island’s main port from the 1930s until the 1990s, when Diakofti took the ferries. It is the nearest landing to the Laconian mainland across the strait. A yacht lies off the town, with the red-rock beaches of the north along the shore beside it.

Mythology

  1. Aphrodite

    Kythira is the first island Aphrodite comes near in Hesiod’s account, which gives her the title Cytherea. Pausanias describes an old sanctuary there whose image of Aphrodite Urania was made of wood and armed.

  2. Uranus

    The fall of Uranus reaches Kythira through what came after it. Hesiod says Aphrodite grows in the foam around his cut flesh and first comes near holy Kythira, which gives her the title Cytherea, before going on to Cyprus.