Kythira
Kythira lies in the open sea off Cape Maleas, the southern tip of the Peloponnese, where the Ionian and Aegean waters meet. Administratively it is one of the seven Ionian Islands, but it sits a long way from Corfu and Paxos; in practice it is reached from Athens or the Laconian coast, and it has always been a little apart — which is the first thing to understand about it.
In myth the island is the birthplace of Aphrodite, risen from the sea-foam off its shores before she went on to Cyprus; Hesiod calls her Kythereia, and the conceit of Kythira as the isle of love runs down through Watteau's Embarkation for Cythera and Baudelaire's bitter Un voyage à Cythère. The Venetians, who held the island for much of four centuries and called it Cerigo, left the deeper physical mark — the Venier family, the kastro above the capital, and a scatter of fortifications around the coast.
Chora, the capital, is a white town strung along a ridge beneath its Venetian fortress, looking down on the twin coves of Kapsali at the island's southern foot. The architecture is neither quite Cycladic nor Ionian but its own — flat-roofed white houses with the occasional carved Venetian doorway, and a stillness the busier islands lost decades ago. Below, Kapsali's double bay is 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 falling 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, near the headland of Palaiokastro where a Minoan peak sanctuary once stood, the oldest Aegean presence on the island. Beaches are small and scattered — Kaladi, Halkos, the pale strand at Diakofti.
Kythira sent more of its people abroad than almost any 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, and 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. Four or five nights, unhurried, with a car and no fixed plan, is the way to take it.
House Notes
The address
High in the Chora, at the entrance to the kastro, Nostos is the old manor of Father Samuel — a two-storey Venetian house with the archway of the old town, restored by one family into a seven-room guesthouse. The rooms carry the names of the winds: Maistros, Ostria, Levantes. Ask for one that takes the sea below.
Platanos
On the plane-shaded square at Mylopotamos, the Platanos has kept its tables under the same trees for a hundred years. Inside are the original patterned floor tiles and a painted wooden ceiling; in summer the kitchen turns to the recipes of Kythira, cooked as at home. It is the village's living room, and the right long lunch on a hot day.
The honey
Kythira's thyme honey is the island's one great export, and the Agricultural Beekeeping Cooperative at Aroniadika — beekeepers banded together since 1996 — is the way to buy it at source. The yield is small, a few tonnes a year, pressed from thyme and the wild herbs of the hills. A standardised jar can be set aside, or the cooperative's rooms at Fratsia visited.
Myrtidia
The monastery of Panagia Myrtidiotissa, on the quiet west coast above the sea, 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, raised the first church around it; the Virgin of the Myrtles has been the patroness of all Kytherians since. Come on an ordinary morning, when the courtyard is empty.
Paleochora
Hidden in a ravine in the north, Paleochora was the island's medieval capital, founded by Monemvasians in the 12th century as Agios Dimitrios and walled against pirates — the Mystras of Kythira. In 1537 the corsair Barbarossa took it, enslaved its people, and left it for dead; it has stood empty ever since. The Byzantine shells of Agios Theodoros and Panagia Faneromeni still keep their frescoes.
The bridge
Below Kato Livadi stands the Katouni bridge, at 110 metres the longest stone bridge in Greece — a long line of stone arches thrown 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; it carried the road east, and it remains the island's grandest piece of nineteenth-century engineering.
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. It is reached on a footpath of some 400 metres 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.
Hytra, by boat
Off the south coast, beyond Kapsali, lies the bare rock of Hytra — Chytra on the charts — whose sea caves a boat noses into on a calm day. Kythira Cruises runs the Gerakari, a 10-metre launch built in 2020, out from Kapsali to swim in the cave's clear water and round the islet at dusk. The day depends wholly on the wind; keep it loose.
Limnionas
On the west coast below Mylopotamos, Limnionas is a small sandy cove with a single canteen and a row of old stone boat-cells, their wide doors cut for the fishermen's caïques. It is reached down the road 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.
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 tradition set a single orange tree so vast that five people could not ring its trunk. Sit by the water with the village above you; few places on Kythira are this shaded.