Skyros
Overview
Skyros lies apart from the rest of the Sporades, in the open Aegean between Evia and the Anatolian coast. Getting there takes intent: a single 2-hour ferry from Kymi, or a light aircraft to an airstrip in the island’s barren south. The island is two halves joined at a low, narrow neck: a green, pine-wooded north and a dry, treeless south of grazing moorland. The white Chora, the main town, spills down an eastern slope beneath a fortified rock.
The Chora is among the most striking in the Aegean. Its flat-roofed Cycladic houses climb densely to the monastery of Agios Georgios, founded in 962 under the Byzantine general Nikephoros Phokas, and to a Venetian castle built over the ancient acropolis above it. On a bluff at the northern edge of town stands a bronze of a naked youth, “Immortality”, looking out to sea. The houses are the island’s chief interest. Skyrian interiors are kept like display cabinets, every wall hung with hand-thrown ceramic plates, beaten copper and embroidery. The rooms are furnished with the low carved wooden chairs the island has made for generations.
The south is very different: bare, windswept Mount Kochylas, where the Skyrian pony runs half-wild. It is one of Europe’s oldest and smallest horse breeds, barely over a metre at the shoulder and only a few hundred in number. It has grazed these moors since antiquity, and some argue that it appears on the Parthenon frieze. At Tris Boukes, down a rough track in an olive grove above a quiet southern bay, is the grave of Rupert Brooke. The English poet died aboard a hospital ship off the island in April 1915, on his way to Gallipoli, and was buried here the same night.
The gentlest beaches are below the Chora, where Magazia and Molos form a single pale curve within walking distance of the town. The pine-covered north has quieter coves at Atsitsa, Agios Fokas and Pefkos, reached by tracks through the forest. Come in late May, June or September. Three or four nights is enough for the Chora, a day among the ponies in the south and the slow drive north into the pines.
House Notes
Arrival
The crossing is by sea from Kymi on Evia, a port 3 hours’ drive from Athens. Skyros Shipping, the island’s own shipping society, sailing since 1980, runs the Achilleas, a 600-passenger ferry that calls daily and carries on to Alonissos and Skopelos through the summer.
The address
In Magazia, where the sand runs straight out below the Chora, the main town, Perigiali is the considered address: 27 rooms, studios and apartments kept by one family, 50 metres up from the beach and 1.5 kilometres below the town. The large suites run to 48 square metres; ask for one of those, facing the water.
The suites
At Aspous bay, halfway between Linaria’s harbour and the Chora and 20 metres from the sand, Skyros Blue Suites has nine suites on two levels. The five ground-floor Deluxe suites each open onto a private pool of 20 square metres, and the Superior suites above have the sea view. It is the quieter, more contemporary alternative to a room in the Chora.
The Faltaits
The Manos Faltaits Museum, in the Palaiopyrgos house at the top of the Chora and open since 1964, is among the first folklore collections in Greece. Faltaits gathered the island’s embroideries, hand-thrown ceramics, carved chests, rare books and his own paintings under one roof. It is the fullest account of why a Skyrian interior looks as it does.
The woodcarver
The carved furniture in those interiors still comes off working benches. At Lefteris Avgoklouris’s workshop the old Skyrian forms are cut by hand, above all the low carved chair, with benches and shelves, and the craft is taught to those who book the days to learn it. A commissioned chair is the thing to carry home.
The ponies
Mouries Farm, the conservation centre working since 1995 to save the Skyrian horse, is the best place to meet it: small enough to be taken for a pony, and one of the rarest breeds alive. Its 65 horses are a quarter of the island’s whole population and the largest herd anywhere, and children light enough are sometimes put up to ride. The aim is to return the horses to the wild on Mount Kochylas.
The museum
The Archaeological Museum of Skyros, in the Chora, holds what the island’s soil has given up from the Neolithic onward, above all the finds from the Prehistoric Settlement of Palamari on the northeast coast. This small room puts the kastro and the bays in order of time, and it is quickly seen before or after the Faltaits.
The kastro
Above the Chora, the fortified rock is older than its castle. This was the Skyros of Lycomedes, the king at whose court Achilles was hidden among the women until Odysseus drew him out for Troy, and from whose cliff, the story runs, Theseus was thrown to his death. Make the climb to the summit at the end of the day, with the walls and the whole Aegean laid out below.
Atsitsa
At Atsitsa, on the wooded northwest coast, Skyros Holidays has run its retreats since 1979, among the longest-running holistic holidays of their kind in Europe. Set in pine forest at the water’s edge, it gives its weeks to yoga, writing, painting, windsurfing and the work of slowing down. Even for a guest staying in the Chora, a day’s course at Atsitsa is the island’s quiet speciality.
Anchorage Notes
Linaria
Linaria is the main port of Skyros, a small harbour on the west coast where the ferry from Kymi comes in. It is the island’s one gateway by sea, more than an hour from the Chora, the main town, across the narrow middle of the island. A yacht lies in the working harbour among the fishing boats, as there is no marina here, and the slow approach from the mainland is Skyros’s particular defence.
Tris Boukes
Tris Boukes is the bay in the south where the English poet Rupert Brooke was buried in an olive grove in April 1915. He died of sepsis, an infection of the blood, aboard the French hospital ship Duguay-Trouin, moored in this bay on its way to Gallipoli, and the war grave still keeps his tomb. A yacht lies in the quiet water the hospital ships used, with the mountains around it and the grave up the track from the shore.
Molos
Below the Chora on the east coast, the long sand of Magazia and Molos runs beneath the hilltop town, its white houses stacked on their rock. A yacht lies off this beach to reach the town and its kastro (castle), and a small church, Agios Nikolaos, stands on its own rock at the Molos end. It is the island’s front beach, with the town a climb up from the sand.
Skyropoula
Skyropoula is an uninhabited private island off the southwest coast, its one hill rising to under 200 metres. The Antoniadis family held it for over a century, and since 2001 it has had a single owner from Cyprus. A yacht passes it rather than landing; it is the westernmost of the small islands around Skyros, with Skantzoura beyond it toward Alonissos.
Mythology
Achilles
Apollodorus says Achilles was hidden on Skyros among the daughters of King Lycomedes, dressed as a girl to keep him from Troy. Odysseus sounds a trumpet, and Achilles gives himself away by reaching for weapons.
Patroclus
The Iliad names Skyros once, and it does so through Patroclus. The woman beside him in Book 9 is Iphis, given to him by Achilles when Achilles took the steep island city of Enyeus.
The Iliad
The Iliad’s one mention of Skyros has Achilles take the island from Enyeus. Iphis, the woman given to Patroclus in Book 9, was taken there, and this is the poem’s own account of the island rather than the later story that Achilles was hidden on it.
Theseus
In Plutarch, Theseus is driven out of Athens and sails to Skyros, where his family held lands, and Lycomedes leads him up to high ground to show him the lands and throws him from the cliffs. Cimon later took the island and dug for the grave where an eagle was tearing at a mound.
Thetis
Thetis hides Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes on Skyros to keep him from the deadly expedition to Troy. Apollodorus has Odysseus expose him by sounding a trumpet among the gifts laid before the women.