Spetses

Spetses is 2 hours from Piraeus on the Flying Dolphin hydrofoil, and horse-drawn carriages set the pace in the centre of town. Cars are banned from the village core, and scooters and bicycles fill the road around the edge of the island. The carriages do real work, taking guests and groceries to and from the hotels, and they are not laid on for visitors.

The heroine of Spetses is Laskarina Bouboulina. In 1821, during the War of Independence, she fitted out and commanded her own flotilla against the Ottoman fleet. She bought a corvette (a small warship) of her own, the Agamemnon, and led the blockade of Nafplio. Her grey stone mansion, two streets back from the harbour, is kept as a museum by her descendants. Each year on 8 September, the Armata festival re-enacts the burning of an Ottoman flagship in the bay in 1822, with fireworks and a wooden ship set alight on the water.

The Poseidonion Grand Hotel on the waterfront was opened in 1914 by Sotirios Anargyros, a benefactor from Spetses. It was modelled on the grand seaside hotels of the Riviera and has been carefully restored over the past two decades. It is the architectural anchor of the harbour, and the obvious base for guests who want a sense of the older Athenian society that the island has cultivated. John Fowles taught at the Anargyreios School here in the early 1950s. He used Spetses as the setting for The Magus and renamed it Phraxos. The school is the imposing classical building above the harbour.

The interior is pine: a thick canopy of Aleppo pine, partly natural and partly the result of Anargyros’s reforestation programme a century ago. Walking and cycling tracks run through it, and the southern coves are reached by water taxi or bicycle. Stay three nights, in late May, June or September.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    The helicopter from Athens to Spetses takes around 35 minutes, and Helistar and iFly Air Charters fly the route. The island has no airfield, so the other way in is the flying dolphin, a fast passenger boat from Piraeus, which takes around 2 hours. Cars are banned in the town, so the way on from the quay is by carriage, water taxi or on foot.

  2. The address

    Orloff Resort, near the Old Harbour, is built around a classical building that housed the island’s first port authority in 1802. The Orloff Restaurant has occupied the historic building since 1991. Whitewashed rooms are grouped around a pool under olive trees.

  3. The Spetses Museum

    The Spetses Museum opened in 1938 in the mansion of Hatzigiannis Mexis, one of the first leaders of Spetses in 1821. The ground floor keeps finds from the Iria shipwreck, from around 1200 BC. The final room holds the flag of the Revolution, the ossuary, or bone chest, of the heroine Laskarina Bouboulina, weapons, historical documents and portraits of the Spetsiot naval fighters.

  4. The Florentine ceiling

    Philip Demertzis-Bouboulis, a fourth-generation descendant of Laskarina Bouboulina, opened the Bouboulina Museum in 1991 to save the 17th-century mansion behind the Dapia. The carved Florentine ceiling of the grand salon was the main reason for the rescue. Weapons, letters and Byzantine icons fill the rooms.

  5. The school

    The Anargyrios & Korgialenios School Foundation keeps its campus open all year. The classical building above the harbour holds the MAGUS Art Café, named for the John Fowles novel, together with a renovated library of around 5,000 volumes, conference rooms and the school’s music academy.

  6. The shipyards

    Just before the Old Harbour, the karnagia, the island’s traditional shipyards, still build and repair wooden caïques as they have since before the Revolution. The yards that built the island’s fighting brigs now lay down keels by eye, and the craft passes from one generation to the next. The slipways at the water’s edge are best walked before the heat of the day.

  7. The lighthouse

    The Spetses lighthouse, on the headland that closes the east side of the Old Harbour, is among the oldest in modern Greece: it was established in 1831, in the first years of the independent state, and automated in 1986. The conical masonry tower sits on a low hill above Baltiza. From the carriage rank at Dapia, the walk out follows the southern shore the long way round.

  8. Agia Paraskevi

    Agia Paraskevi, on the south coast of Spetses, is reached by boat or by the daily bus from the town. Pine trees run down to the water, and large pebbles lie below the chapel that gives the bay its name. The beach is organised, with sunbeds and a beach bar, and road traffic stops at the line of pines.

  9. Zogeria

    Zogeria, on the north coast about half an hour from the port, is the alternative when the south is busy. The cove is in two parts, of sand and fine pebbles, with pines reaching the water, sunbeds, showers and a small tavern. It is reached by sea taxi from the harbour or by the dirt road around the headland.

  10. The kitchen

    Patralis, at Kounoupitsa, has been the island’s seafood address since 1935. Uncle Panos the fisherman opened it, and his son Vasilis and his grandchildren Argyris and Nikos run it now. The menu holds fish soup, astakomakaronada (lobster with pasta), shrimp saganaki with feta, crayfish and oven-baked lamb, served at plain tables by the sea.

Anchorage Notes

  1. The Dapia

    The Dapia is the main port of Spetses, named for the gun battery the islanders held here in the War of Independence. It is an artificial harbour with two piers, where the flying dolphins (fast hydrofoil ferries) from Piraeus, the ferries and the sea taxis all come in. Cars are banned in the town, so from the carriage rank at the head of the quay a guest goes on by carriage, by bicycle or on foot.

  2. The Old Harbour

    Around the headland southeast of the town lies the Old Harbour, Baltiza, the natural harbour the yachts use, from small cruisers to the largest, with five small piers along it. At its head the karnagia, the traditional boatyards, build their caïques, and the lighthouse stands on the promontory that closes it. A yacht lies here for the boatyards and the night life, away from the ferry traffic at the Dapia.

  3. Agioi Anargyroi

    Agioi Anargyroi is the largest sandy beach on the island, on the southwest coast, with the sea cave of Bekiris at one end. The traditional boats run to it from the Dapia through the season, from morning to sunset. A yacht lies off the long beach, with the pines behind and the cave a swim away, on the quiet side of the island from the town.

  4. Spetsopoula

    Spetsopoula is a small uninhabited island off the southeast coast, one of the islets the municipality of Spetses counts among its own, with Falkonera and Velopoula. A yacht passes it rather than calling there. The green island lies across the narrow strait, at the eastern edge of the Spetses water, with the open Argolic gulf beyond.