Travel / Destinations

    Skyros, Greece



    Chora, the main village of Skyros island, Greece.


    Skyros (Σκύρος) is an island in Greece, the southernmost of the Sporades, an archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Around the 2nd millennium BC and slightly later, the island was known as The Island of the Magnetes where the Magnetes used to live and later Pelasgia and Dolopia and later Skyros.


    Skyros, Greece.
    At 209 square kilometres (81 sq mi) it is the largest island of the Sporades, and has a population of about 3,000 (in 2011). It is part of the regional unit of Euboea.

    The north of the island is covered by a forest, while the south, dominated by the highest mountain, called Kochila, (792 m), is bare and rocky.

    The island's capital is also called Skyros (or, locally, Chora). The main port, on the west coast, is Linaria.

    According to Greek mythology, Theseus died on Skyros when he was thrown from a cliff. Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, was from Skyros (or Scyros, as its name is sometimes transliterated), as told in the play by Sophocles, Philoctetes (line 239).

    In c. 475 BC,according to Thucydides, Cimon defeated the Dolopians (the original inhabitants) and conquered the entire island. From that date, it was colonized by Athenian settlers and became a part of the Athenian Empire. It was on the strategic trade route from Athens to the Black Sea. Cimon claimed to have found the remains of Theseus, and returned them to Athens.

    In 340 BC the Macedonians took over the island and dominated it until 192 BC, when the king Philip and the Roman Republican forces restored it to Athens. After the Fourth Crusade, the island became part of the domain of Geremia Ghisi.

    Rupert Brooke, the famous English poet, is buried on Skyros, having died on board a French hospital ship moored off the island in 1915, during World War I.

    Get in

    It can be accessed from the port of Kymi on the island of Evvia, a couple of hours by car or from KTEL bus depot in Chalcis on Evvia.

    The ferry runs daily through the year with often more than one sailing in the summer season. It's subsidized and under 10 euros each way and takes about 1 hour 45 minutes to Linaria the Skyrian port.

    See

    The island has a castle (the kastro) that dates from the Venetian occupation (13th to 15th centuries), a Byzantine monastery (the Monastery of Saint George), the grave of English poet Rupert Brooke in an olive grove (30 minutes drive from Linaria) by the road leading to Tris Boukes harbour. There are many beaches on the coast. The island has its own breed of Skyrian ponies.

    During the summer the island population swells dramatically from 3000 to 8000 approx but the island doesn't feel exploited or overcrowded.

    Additionally the island is popularised by Skyros Holidays which operate two holistic health resorts on the island - one in the chora (local name for the principal town Skyros) and the other at the picturesque venue of Atsitsa bay. (Wikipedia/Wikivoyage)



    Small street of Skyros. Greece.




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