Skiathos

Skiathos has an international airport that takes charter flights from Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia, and that is the reason its summer is busier than any other Sporadean island. Late June through August is package season; May, June, and the second half of September are when the island recovers its earlier register. Choose your dates with that in mind.

The coast is the obvious draw: more than sixty beaches around an island only twelve kilometres long, several reached only on foot or by water taxi from the harbour. Koukounaries, a long arc of pale sand backed by an Aleppo pine forest designated a natural monument, has a small freshwater lagoon behind it that draws migratory birds. Lalaria, on the northern cliffs, is white pebbles and translucent water reachable only by boat. Skip the central southern beaches in August.

The town has more history than its reputation suggests. Alexandros Papadiamantis, the most celebrated prose writer of nineteenth-century Greek letters, was born in Skiathos in 1851; his small stone house in the old town is preserved as a museum and holds the manuscripts. The Bourtzi peninsula, a fortified headland that splits the harbour into two bays, was a small Venetian stronghold and now serves as a summer cultural venue. Above the town, at the Evangelistria monastery founded in 1794, an early version of the Greek revolutionary flag was raised in 1807 by a council of klephts and naval captains plotting what became the 1821 uprising.

Kastro, on the northern cliffs, is the abandoned medieval capital that the islanders left in the early nineteenth century once piracy had subsided enough to live by the sea again. The walk down to it is an hour each way through pine. Three nights, more if you want a Skopelos day-trip, and June or late September if at all possible.

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, takes scheduled Aegean and Sky Express from Athens and direct seasonal charter through the summer from London, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Zurich. The runway ceiling is a Boeing 757-200; the approach passes a few metres above the public road at the threshold. JSI handles general aviation 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, the family-side sister property on the longer sand, holds 131 rooms across two beachfront restaurants — Basilico for the breakfast room and Ammos for the dinner table.

  3. The kitchens

    Marmita on Evangelistrias Street, opened in 2013 in a traditional house with a garden of fairy-lit trees, runs chef Marsel Shyti — Arzak-trained at San Sebastian — at the pass; the kitchen turns on seasonality and regional produce. Bakaliko, on the waterfront between the New Port and the JSI runway threshold, holds the fish-and-shared-mezedes register and the harbour view.

  4. The local tables

    Taverna Anatoli, on the hillside above Kalyvia 5 km out the road to Evangelistria with the view to Skopelos, is the slow-cooked register — rooster stew, 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 fish-mezedes and tsipouro room. Diamantis sits on Diamanti Beach between Vromolimnos and Kanapitsa, reached by tender.

  5. Parissi

    The island's only working winery is Parissi, built in 2020 by Giannis Parissis on 30 acres above the chapel of Profitis Ilias, with Skiathos-born oenologist Katerina Mitzelou — formerly at Sigalas, Santorini — in the cellar. The current bottling runs to rhoditis, assyrtiko, and limnio at a capacity of 30,000 bottles. Tastings 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. The label is Skiathos Bee Farm — silver medal at BIOLMIEL in Italy in 2016, three generations of beekeeping behind it, one of three apiaries left on the island.

  7. Tripia Petra

    Lalaria is reached only by kaiki — the run from Skiathos town along the north coast takes 30 to 40 minutes through summer. At the northern end stands Tripia Petra, the natural sea arch the captains nudge their tenders through for the light it throws on the white pebble shore below. Removing a pebble is prohibited under municipal rule; the beach is protected.

  8. The trail

    The municipality and the non-profit Diadrasis completed the island's signposted trail network in 2022 — 14 waymarked routes across the interior, with eight cycling and five themed cultural routes added in 2024. The cardinal 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 town keeps the loom on which the first Greek flag — white cross on sky-blue — was woven in 1807. The founders were Kollyvades monks from Mount Athos: Niphon of Chios and the local Gregorios Hatzistamatis, on land Hatzistamatis had inherited. The Catholicon is Byzantine cross-in-square, three domes, a hand-carved iconostasis under seventeenth-century icons.

  10. Tsougria

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

Anchorage Notes

  1. The Old Port

    Skiathos town’s harbour shelters the small boats and the ferries to Skopelos, Volos and Agios Konstantinos, and off its quay stands the Bourtzi — the little Venetian fortress the Ghisi brothers raised on its islet in 1207, a sister to the Bourtzi of Nafplio. The daily caïques leave the Old Port to round the island; a yacht lies in the town’s water, the fortress on its rock at the harbour’s heart.

  2. Koukounaries

    Koukounaries holds the southwest, the golden beach backed by a stone-pine forest and a lagoon behind it — one of only a handful of natural pine woods that reach the sea in Greece. A yacht lies off the long curve of sand, the pines to the waterline, in the most famous bay of the island. 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, a steep cliff falling to the sea — defensible against the pirates who scoured these waters. It was abandoned when the town returned to the port. A yacht lies off the cliff below the ruined citadel, reached otherwise only by the long path or the excursion boats from the Old Port.

  4. Mandraki

    Mandraki, which the island calls Mandraki Xerxi, holds a remote golden bay some fourteen kilometres from the town on the southwest coast — reached by the coastal track from Koukounaries or on foot through the pine forest behind it. 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.