Thassos

Thassos is the northernmost Greek island, reached by ferry from the mainland at Keramoti (20 minutes) or Kavala (1 hour 20 minutes). It is closer to Sofia than to Athens, and that shapes who comes. In summer many Bulgarian, Romanian and Serbian holidaymakers drive down through the Balkans, alongside a smaller share of visitors from central Europe. English-speaking guests are a minority. The island is more relaxed than the southern islands, and noticeably cheaper.

In antiquity its wealth came from metal. Thassos had some of the most productive gold mines in the early Greek world. They paid for the city of Limenas on the northern coast and one of the larger classical theatres in the eastern Aegean. The agora (the ancient marketplace) and the western harbour are within walking distance of the modern town. White marble replaced gold once the seams ran out. At the abandoned ancient quarry of Aliki, unfinished column drums still sit half-cut on the rocks beside a turquoise cove. It is the most photogenic of the old working sites, and the cove is now also a swimming bay.

The interior is forested and surprisingly mountainous. Mount Ipsarion, over 1,000 metres high, rises in the centre of the island. The mountain village of Theologos was the capital in Ottoman times, before people moved to the coast. It is built along a steep, stone-paved spine and is the place for a long lunch of slow-roasted goat. Thassos thyme honey and pine honey are widely sold and unusually fragrant; buy from a producer rather than a tourist shop.

Giola, on the south-eastern coast, is a deep natural rock pool filled by waves breaking over a low edge. It looks exactly like the photographs and is crowded by midday in summer. Three nights is enough. Come for the forest, the beaches and a different kind of Greek summer, rather than for Cycladic polish.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Fly into “Alexander the Great” airport at Kavala (KVA), drive 15 minutes to Keramoti, and cross to Limenas in about 35 minutes on the ferry of ANETH, the Thassian cooperative founded in 1974. The longer crossing from Kavala to Skala Prinos takes about 1 hour 15 minutes and serves the west coast. Thessaloniki (SKG) is the year-round alternative, 2.5 hours by road from the ferry.

  2. The address

    Makryammos at Limenas is the considered 5-star address on the island, 2 kilometres from the port on a private crescent of beach backed by pines, the only enclosed bathing bay on Thassos. The hotel has been renovated for what it calls “a new era”. Hillside rooms and sea-front suites sit above the pine grove that runs down to the sand.

  3. Simi

    Simi, at the old port of Limenas, has been a family seafood kitchen since 1952, with a waterfront terrace facing the fishing boats and the channel towards Kavala. Grilled octopus comes with fava, a yellow split-pea purée, and lemon, and the catch of the day comes from the morning’s landings. It is open from noon to midnight in season; reservations are taken in summer, and the room fills by 8pm.

  4. Theologos

    The mountain village of Theologos was the capital in the Ottoman period, before the population moved to the coast, and its long stone-paved main street runs high in the interior. At the southern end of the village, Iatrou (known locally as Kleoniki) is the place for Thassian slow-roasted goat, cooked on a spit over wood, and the owner Kostas usually meets guests at the road and walks them to the table. In season there is kokoretsi too, lamb offal roasted on a spit.

  5. The honey

    The Apicultural Cooperative of Thassos, founded in 1973 by 44 island beekeepers, still standardises and markets the honey its beekeepers produce, and is the right source for the island’s pine and thyme honeys. The cooperative puts the quality of Thassian pine honey down to mountain pine groves that no other crop crosses. The headquarters at Rachoni keeps weekday hours.

  6. Sotirelis at Panagia

    The Sotirelis family have pressed olive oil at Panagia, in the green interior above Limenas, since 1915, over four generations. Their original watermill ran on water from three village springs until electricity reached the island in 1968; it is the only one in Greece still in working order, and is now a museum open to visitors. The modern mill at Limenas makes the family’s extra virgin and early-harvest oils, and the early-harvest is the one to ask for.

  7. The theatre

    The ancient theatre of Limenas, built of white Thassian marble in the late 4th century BC, is set into the hillside above the agora. The French Archaeological School excavated it from 1921, and the Diazoma conservation programme restored it from 1996 to 2002. The cavea, or tiered seating, faces west over the harbour and the sea towards the Kavala channel, the marble stage front once had 12 columns, and the walk up from the harbour climbs through pines with the agora and the western harbour below.

  8. The Kouros

    The Archaeological Museum at Limenas, in a 1934 building beside the agora, holds the Kouros of Thassos, an archaic kriophoros: a youth bringing a ram to sacrifice, nearly 3.5 metres tall and dated to around 600 BC. The French School found it in 1911 in five pieces, reused as building stone in a Byzantine wall. The Aphrodite on a dolphin and the head of Alexander the Great are in the same rooms.

  9. Aliki

    The Aliki peninsula on the south-east coast, 32 kilometres from Limenas, is the ancient quarry that supplied white Thassian marble from the 7th century BC to the 7th century AD, more than 1,200 years of work, abandoned at the Slavic invasion. Half-cut column drums still lie on the rocks above a turquoise cove, and the sanctuary of the Dioscuri, the patrons of sailors, stands on the headland with twin 5th-century basilicas. There is swimming on either side of the peninsula.

  10. Saliara

    Saliara, known as “Marble Beach”, lies 7 kilometres east of Limenas through the working marble quarries. The road is a white dirt track, best taken by 4×4 or by the water taxi that leaves the new port at 10.30am daily in season. Pebbles of white Thassian marble line the waterline and the sea is the same pale blue; Porto Vathy, in the next bay, is the quieter choice for the afternoon.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Limenas

    Limenas, or Limenas Thasou (“Port of Thasos”), is the capital and main harbour on the north coast, built on the port of the ancient city-state. The acropolis stands on its three hills above the town, with the agora (the ancient marketplace) and the ancient theatre at the water’s edge below. A yacht lies in the working harbour from which Thasos shipped its marble and its wine for 2,500 years.

  2. Skala Prinos

    Skala Prinos, on the west coast 20 kilometres south of the town, is the port for the Kavala ferry: the shorter crossing to the mainland and the way in for the western villages. A yacht lies at the working ferry harbour, with the green mountains of the interior behind. It is the mainland’s nearest door to Thassos, and the least ornamental of its harbours.

  3. Limenaria

    Limenaria, on the south coast, is the island’s second town. It was once a mining town, and its old metal works and a folklore museum keep that memory. A yacht lies off the town, with the southern beaches along the coast and the wooded hills behind, below the pine-dark mountains of the interior.

  4. Potos

    Potos, in the southwest, is the island’s main beach resort: a long sandy beach with hotels along it, and the road up to the mountain village of Theologos behind. A yacht lies off the resort, which is the busiest of the southern bays in summer and empty out of it.

Mythology

  1. Heracles

    Herodotus went to Thasos and was told that settlers from Phoenicia built its temple of Heracles as much as five generations before the birth of Heracles son of Amphitryon in Hellas. He took this as evidence that the god Heracles is older than the hero of the labours, and that the Greeks are right to worship him twice, as an immortal and as a dead hero.