Skiathos

Skiathos has an international airport that takes charter flights from Britain, Germany and Scandinavia. That is why its summer is busier than on any other island in the Sporades. Late June to August is package-holiday season. In May, June and the second half of September the island returns to a quieter pace. Choose your dates with that in mind.

The coast is the obvious draw: more than 60 beaches around an island only 12 kilometres long, several reached only on foot or by water taxi from the harbour. Koukounaries is a long curve of pale sand backed by an Aleppo pine forest designated a natural monument. Behind it, a small freshwater lagoon draws migrating birds. Lalaria, on the northern cliffs, has white pebbles and clear water and can be reached only by boat. Avoid the central southern beaches in August.

The town has more history than its reputation suggests. Alexandros Papadiamantis, the most celebrated Greek prose writer of the nineteenth century, was born on Skiathos in 1851. His small stone house in the old town is kept as a museum and holds his manuscripts. The Bourtzi peninsula, a fortified headland that divides the harbour into two bays, was a small Venetian stronghold and is now a summer venue for cultural events. Above the town is the Evangelistria monastery, founded in 1794. There, in 1807, a council of klephts (mountain fighters against Ottoman rule) and naval captains raised an early version of the Greek revolutionary flag while planning what became the 1821 uprising.

Kastro, on the northern cliffs, is the abandoned medieval capital. Islanders left it in the early nineteenth century, once piracy had died down enough for them to live by the sea again. The walk down to it takes an hour each way through pine. Stay three nights, more if you want a day trip to Skopelos, and come in June or late September if you can.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Skiathos Alexandros Papadiamantis Airport (JSI) opened in 1972 on a 1,628-metre runway between the island and the islet of Lazareta. It takes scheduled Aegean and Sky Express flights from Athens and direct seasonal charters through the summer from London, Vienna, Frankfurt and Zurich; the largest aircraft it accepts is a Boeing 757-200, and the approach passes a few metres above the public road at the start of the runway. JSI handles general aviation, meaning private flights, on request.

  2. The address

    Aegean Suites at Megali Ammos, the Santikos Collection’s adults-only, all-suite house above the beach, is the quietest hotel address on the island. Princess Resort at Agia Paraskevi, its family-side sister property on the longer sand, has 131 rooms and two beachfront restaurants: Basilico for breakfast and Ammos for dinner.

  3. The kitchens

    Marmita on Evangelistrias Street opened in 2013 in a traditional house with a garden of fairy-lit trees. Chef Marsel Shyti, trained at Arzak in San Sebastian, leads the kitchen, which follows the seasons and regional produce. Bakaliko, on the waterfront between the New Port and the start of the JSI runway, is the place for fish, shared mezedes (small plates) and the harbour view.

  4. The local tables

    Taverna Anatoli, on the hillside above Kalyvia 5 kilometres out on the road to Evangelistria, looks across to Skopelos and cooks slowly: rooster stew and goat in tomato, learned from Mrs Katina by the kitchen’s current generation. Kabourelias Ouzeri at the old port, opened in the 1960s by Ioannis Kampourelias, is the room for fish mezedes and tsipouro, a grape spirit. Diamantis sits on Diamanti Beach between Vromolimnos and Kanapitsa, reached by tender.

  5. Parissi

    Parissi is the island’s only working winery, built in 2020 by Giannis Parissis on 30 acres above the chapel of Profitis Ilias, with the Skiathos-born oenologist Katerina Mitzelou, formerly at Sigalas on Santorini, in the cellar. The current wines are rhoditis, assyrtiko and limnio, from a capacity of 30,000 bottles. Tastings are by arrangement.

  6. Skiathos Bee Farm

    Kostas Mandalaras keeps 150 hives at Troulos and works the island’s pine forest for the dark, resin-edged honey the Sporades produce in good years. His label, Skiathos Bee Farm, has three generations of beekeeping behind it and is one of three apiaries left on the island.

  7. Tripia Petra

    Lalaria is reached only by kaiki, a small wooden boat, and the run from Skiathos town along the north coast takes 30 to 40 minutes in summer. At its northern end stands Tripia Petra, the natural sea arch the captains steer their tenders through for the light it throws on the white pebble shore below. A municipal rule forbids taking a pebble, and the beach is protected.

  8. The trail

    The municipality and the non-profit Diadrasis completed the island’s signposted trail network in 2022, with 14 waymarked routes across the interior, and added eight cycling routes and five themed cultural routes in 2024. The principal walk is ST6, The Roads of Kastro, past the chapel of Panagia Doman and the Chimonas spring before the descent to the cliff fortress. Return by kaiki past Lalaria.

  9. The loom

    The Evangelistria monastery above the town keeps the loom on which the first Greek flag, a white cross on sky blue, was woven in 1807. Its founders were Kollyvades monks from Mount Athos, Niphon of Chios and the local Gregorios Hatzistamatis, on land Hatzistamatis had inherited. The Catholicon, the main church, is Byzantine cross-in-square with three domes and a hand-carved iconostasis, the screen before the altar, under 17th-century icons.

  10. Tsougria

    Tsougria, the small protected islet just off the south coast, is 15 minutes by water taxi from Koukounaries. The crossing reaches a sheltered cove with one sand beach and, above the olive grove on the islet’s west side, the chapel of Agios Floros, commissioned in the early 1960s by the shipowner Thomas Epifanides. Tsougria is the considered alternative to a busy afternoon at Koukounaries.

Anchorage Notes

  1. The Old Port

    The harbour of Skiathos town shelters the small boats and the ferries to Skopelos, Volos and Agios Konstantinos. Off its quay, on its own islet, stands the Bourtzi, the little Venetian fortress the Ghisi brothers built in 1207, a sister to the Bourtzi of Nafplio. The daily caïques (traditional wooden boats) leave the Old Port to go round the island, and a yacht lies in the town’s water with the fortress at the heart of the harbour.

  2. Koukounaries

    Koukounaries, in the southwest, is a golden beach backed by a stone-pine forest with a lagoon behind it, one of only a handful of natural pine woods in Greece that reach the sea. A yacht lies off the long curve of sand in the most famous bay of the island, with the pines down to the waterline. The road out from town was among the first works of the modern resort, in 1964.

  3. Kastro

    Kastro was the island’s capital in the Middle Ages, moved in the fourteenth century to a high rock at the northernmost point, above a steep cliff, where it could be defended against the pirates of these waters. It was abandoned when the town returned to the port. A yacht lies off the cliff below the ruined citadel, which is otherwise reached only by the long path or by the excursion boats from the Old Port.

  4. Mandraki

    Mandraki, which the island calls Mandraki Xerxi, is a remote golden bay on the southwest coast, some 14 kilometres from the town. It is reached by the coastal track from Koukounaries or on foot through the pine forest behind it, and the name recalls the Persian fleet that came to grief on the rocks off this coast in 480 BC. A yacht lies off the sand, in a privacy the road cannot easily reach.