Skyros
Skyros lies apart from the rest of the Sporades, set down in open Aegean between Evia and the Anatolian coast and reached by neither the casual nor the hurried — a single two-hour ferry from Kymi, or a light aircraft onto an airstrip in the island's barren south. It is two islands joined at a low waist: a green, pine-wooded north and a dry, treeless south of grazing moor, with the white Chora spilling down an eastern slope beneath a fortified rock.
The Chora is among the most striking in the Aegean, a dense fall of flat-roofed Cycladic houses climbing to the monastery of Agios Georgios, founded in 962 under the Byzantine general Nikephoros Phokas, and to a Venetian castle raised over the ancient acropolis above it. On a bluff at the town's northern edge stands a bronze of a naked youth, 'Immortality', looking out to sea. The houses themselves are the island's quiet marvel: Skyrian interiors are kept as cabinets, every wall hung with hand-thrown ceramic plates, beaten copper, and embroidery, the rooms furnished with the low carved wooden chairs the island has made for generations.
The south is another country — bare, wind-scoured Mount Kochylas, where the Skyrian pony runs half-wild. One of Europe's oldest and smallest horse breeds, barely over a metre at the shoulder and numbering only a few hundred, it has grazed these moors since antiquity and appears, some argue, on the Parthenon frieze. Down a rough track at Tris Boukes, in an olive grove above a quiet southern bay, lies the grave of Rupert Brooke, the English poet who died aboard a hospital ship off the island in April 1915 on his way to Gallipoli, and was buried here the same night.
The beaches are gentlest below the Chora, where Magazia and Molos run in a single pale arc within walking distance of the town. The pined north holds the quieter coves — Atsitsa, Agios Fokas, Pefkos — reached by track through the forest. Come for late May, June, or September; three or four nights is the measure, long 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, the port itself a three-hour drive from Athens. Skyros Shipping — the island's own naval 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 slowness of the approach is the point.
The address
In Magazia, where the sand runs straight out below the Chora, Perigiali is the considered address — 27 rooms, studios, and apartments kept by the one family, 50 metres up from the beach and a kilometre and a half below the town. The large suites run to 48 square metres. Ask for one of those, facing the water.
The suites
At Aspous bay, set equally between Linaria's harbour and the Chora and twenty metres from the sand, Skyros Blue Suites holds nine suites across two tiers. The five ground-floor Deluxe suites each open onto a private pool of 20 square metres; the Superior suites above take the sea view. The quieter, more contemporary counterpoint to a room in the Chora.
The Faltaits
The Manos Faltaits Museum, set 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 — the fullest reading 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 — the low carved chair above all, 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
The Skyrian horse — small enough to be taken for a pony, and one of the rarest breeds alive — is best met at Mouries Farm, the conservation centre working to save it since 1995. Its 65 horses are a quarter of the island's whole population and the largest herd anywhere; children light enough are sometimes put up to ride. The aim is to return them to the wild on Mount Kochylas.
The museum
The Archaeological Museum of Skyros, in the Chora, gathers what the island's soil has given up from the Neolithic on — chief among them the finds from the Prehistoric Settlement of Palamari, on the island's northeast coast. It is the small room that turns the kastro and the bays into a chronology, quickly seen before or after the Faltaits.
The kastro
The fortified rock above the Chora is older than its castle. This was the Skyros of Lycomedes, the king in 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. The climb to the summit is the one to make at the end of the day, 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-standing 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 lodged in the Chora, a day's course at Atsitsa is the island's quiet speciality.