Scattered across the teal-blue sea as if the gods had dropped their marbles, the Greek islands are like nowhere else on earth. They are the stepping stones to thyme-scented breezes, drowsy olive groves and retsina-soaked nights under a brilliant frieze of stars.
And what could be more exciting than opening a dog-eared map and tracing a curious finger over its 6,000 islands then high-tailing it to Athens, hopping on an old bone-shaker of a ferry and alighting on one with a name you’ve never heard of?
There are popular isles with cruise-boat crowds, such as Crete and Corfu, Mykonos, Rhodes, Kos and Santorini. And then there are the likes of Symi, Sifnos and Serifos – islands once untouched by tourism, that have gradually seen ferries multiply and prices soar. But there is also a Greece beyond the sunset-hogging Instagrammers.
Do the legwork and you’ll find the Greek dream, with under-the-radar islands where you can book a sea-view room with change from £50. You’ll find remote villages with one-pan tavernas, where families bring slow-cooked lamb, aubergine fritters and just-caught fish to the table. And you’ll find trails threading to blue-domed, incense-misted chapels, half-moon coves and into cloud-wisped mountains.
After doing the Greek salad-tzatziki-beach thing to death, you swear it’ll be Italy next year – but deep down, you know the tug of the Greek isles is too strong. You’ll be back. Oh, and that week you booked off? Make it two. The Greeks don’t rush – neither should you.
1. Kéa
Pardon, where? This divine Cyclades island is one the Athenians have kept under their (sun) hat for too long. Though just a whisper away from the Greek capital, Kéa still has a proper escapist air to it, with lush green, cobbled-path-woven hills and cliff-rimmed, gold-sand bays lapped by the cobalt-blue Aegean – all refreshingly quiet, providing you dodge the summer holidays. On the west coast, the newly opened, hotly anticipated One&Only delivers a shot of Instagrammable luxury, with private-pool, four-figure-a-night villas and a fabulous spa, but it will be a while yet before the jet-set really gets a grip.
If Greek culture enthralls, you’re on the right island. Ioulida is the epicentre, with its fascinating archaeological museum and ancient, 26ft-long Lion of Kéa, carved out of the bedrock around 600 BC. Further south, the isolated ancient city of Karthaia beguiles, with its enigmatic acropolis temple remains. In the north, head to Panagia Kastriani monastery, a clifftop vision in blue and white, for miracles related to the Virgin Mary and dreamy views over to the neighbouring isle of Andros.
How to get there
There are daily Triton Ferries from Athens to Kéa (one hour, £11).
Where to stay
In an elevated spot above Ioulida, Kéa Village (0030 697 224 3330; keavillage.gr) has crisply designed, sea-view suites from £120 including breakfast.
2. Ikaria
There’s magic in the air on wild, savagely beautiful Ikaria in the eastern Aegean. This is where the party-loving, wine-swigging god Dionysus was born, and where Icarus fell and drowned after flying too close to the sun. For much of history, islanders hid from pirates in giant rock houses. Reclusiveness bred resilience, and today Ikaria is one of the world’s five “blue zones”, with an exceptionally high number of centenarians. Sulphur-rich hot springs and a diet rich in wild greens (try hortopita pies) and natural wines contribute to its longevity, but there’s also something untouchable.
Ikaria is the classic Greek package but with the drama turned up. The winds and waves are more powerful, the granite peaks higher than most other islands, punching up to 3,402ft Aetheras. You need to be as nimble as a goat to hike the monopatia (old footpaths) dipping into the island’s thickly forested, boulder-scattered mountains, and the narrow roads swinging precariously along clifftops are life-flashing-before-your-eyes stuff. But it’s all worthwhile for heavenly bays such as Seychelles Beach, with white pebbles sliding into a brilliantly azure sea.
How to get there
Dodekanisos Seaways ferry from Kos (3 hours, 20 minutes, £32).
Where to stay
Ikaria Studios in Manganitis (0030 2275 032030; booking.com) has simple studios from £38.
3. Amorgos
Like a seahorse drifting in the deep-blue Aegean, the island of Amorgos, in the eastern Cyclades, presses all the fantasy Greek island buttons. My, my, is it lovely, with a road whipping along its mountainous spine, cliffs dropping to waters of stained-glass blue, and alley-woven villages where bone-white houses glimmer in the heat, cats doze in doorways and every bend is a photo op. Whether you take the slow boat from Athens or faster Super Jet from Mykonos, you’ll be bewitched as soon as you set foot on the island, which starred in Luc Besson’s 1988 film The Big Blue.
But despite its cinematic looks, tourism here is low-key, and still almost exclusively made up of French yachties, drawn by the star status of Besson’s hit. When you can tear yourself away from ravishing beaches such as Kalotaritissa Bay, with its blond sand and cerulean waters, check out the village of Chora, a medieval knockout with its windmills and Venetian castle, or puff up 300 steps to Panagia Hozoviotissa, the island’s cliff-hugging, white-walled monastery.
How to get there
Seajets ferries run from Athens-Piraeus to Katapola on Amorgos (6 hours, 30 minutes, £74). Or take the Super Jet from Mykonos (2 hours, £75).
Where to stay
In the island’s northwest, Vigla Hotel (0030 2285 073288; vigla-amorgos.com) has doubles from £140 (minimum stay of three nights).
4. Tinos
Mykonos is just a wave away, but it’s hard to imagine a more different neighbour to the glam party isle than laid-back Tinos, where it’s often silent but for the whirr of cicadas and shush of the sea. Romantic? You bet. This under-the-radar find is rippled with hills fragrant with wild thyme and indented with pale-sand beaches with crystal-blue waters, sunsets that pop and precious few people – pine-shaded Agios Romanos is delightful.
The villages have kept wonderful old-school Greek flavour. Take prettily whitewashed Pyrgos, for instance, with its plane-tree shaded square and Museum of Marble Crafts, spotlighting the island’s millennia-old marble quarrying and sculpting tradition. Above the capital, Chora, the striking neo-Renaissance church of Panagia Megalochari reels in pilgrims with its miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary.
You’ll mostly be content with doing típota (nothing) – apart from eating, that is. Here Tinos stands head and shoulders above most Cycladic islands, with winningly fresh seafood still hauled in by local fishermen (try Maistros in Panormos bay), creative riffs on island produce (Athmar in Pyrgos) and stunning wines. For the very best, stray into the granite boulder-strewn hills to T-oinos for a spin of its award-winning vineyards and a three-wine tasting.
How to get there
Golden Star Ferries and Fast Ferries operate a twice-daily service from Mykonos (35 minutes, £17.50).
Where to stay
Photogenically poised above Agios Ioannis-Porto beach on the southeast coast, Carlos Bungalows (0030 228 302 4159; carlo.gr) has attractive marble-floored, sea-view doubles from £84 including breakfast.
5. Alonnisos
While everyone raves about Skopelos of Mamma Mia! fame, they whisper quietly about neighbouring Alonnisos. But this insanely pretty island in the northern Sporades will make you want to sing out loud. Here, time-lost villages cling to hillsides and Aleppo pine forests dive to cliff-rimmed bays washed by a glassy turquoise sea. Cicadas strum on trails whipping through vineyard, orchard and olive grove; tiny chapels glitter with icons; and curious goats eye up your lunch at pretty beachfront tavernas.
With its cat-patrolled alleys, pavement cafés and blue-shuttered houses, Chora, the old capital, is delightful. But it’s on the rockier, unscathed west coast that you’ll feel the pull of the wild. Nature is the big draw: see dolphins, turtles and the endangered Mediterranean monk seal at the National Marine Park (one of Europe’s biggest); dive down to a fascinating 5th-century shipwreck at Peristera’s underwater museum, or hunt for the wild herbs that have made the island a centre of hom*oeopathy.
How to get there
Seajets ferries run from Skiathos (40 minutes, £16.50).
Where to stay
In an olive grove near Glyfa beach, Ilya Botanic Suites (0030 6938327401; ilyabotanicsuites.com) has slickly designed suites with spa baths or hot tubs from £152 (minimum three-night stay).
6. Anafi
But a stone-skim away from Santorini, Anafi lives up to its name, which means “revelation”. Greek myth has it that Apollo, god of light, created this gorgeous speck of an island to shelter the Argonauts from a fierce storm. More likely, however, is that it bubbled up during the Minoan eruption of Santorini in 1600 BC. So far, so mysterious. And that sums up Anafi in a nutshell. If you want to vanish for a spell, where better to do so than on this wild, pin-drop peaceful island, with houses of dazzling white, water of searing blue and rockscapes stippled with gnarly olives and prickly pears?
Flop on tamarisk-tree-backed, turquoise sea-lapped swaths of golden sand such as Klisidi, Katsouni and Roukounas and Katalimatsa. Catch south-coast sunsets of brilliant burnt orange and soft pink. Or for a staggering view, trek to the top of 1,500ft Kalamos rock. Rising out of the sapphire sea like a sleeping dragon, it’s the second-largest monolith in the Mediterranean after Gibraltar.
How to get there
Hellenic Seaways runs fast boats from Santorini (one hour, 15 minutes, £6.30). Other ferry companies include Blue Star Ferries and Seajets.
Where to stay
The hilltop Apollon Village Hotel (0030 6977 672130; apollonvillagehotel.com) has bright, sea-view studios from £70.
7. Nisyros
If you’ve never heard of Nisyros in Greece’s Dodecanese Islands, you’re missing a trick. Bubbling up from the Aegean like a lost Atlantis, the island is essentially one big volcano. Though just an hour’s ferry ride from Kos, barely a tourist sets foot here. With whitewashed cubic houses, blue-domed churches clinging to cliffs, hill towns rising out of lava, pumice and ash, healing hot springs and empty dark-sand beaches, Nisyros is Santorini without the cost, cruise ships or crowds. What a find.
A still-active volcano, which last blew its top in 1888, is now the island’s showstopper. Trails wriggle up to its crater and beyond to oak forests, thyme-perfumed pastures, olive and almond groves, vineyards and silent coves pounded by the brilliant blue sea. There’s a sprinkling of sights, like Mandraki’s acropolis, clifftop crusader castle and cave church. But pleasures here are mostly simple ones: morning coffee at a kafenio, lazy taverna lunches and fireball sunsets on the west coast.
How to get there
Dodekanisos Seaways ferry from Kos (50 minutes, £14).
Where to stay
Just a step from the sea, Porfyris Hotel (0030 2242 031376; porfyrishotel.gr) has a pool and sweet-and-simple doubles from £60 (minimum two-night stay).
8. Kythira
Dangling off the Peloponnese’s southern tip and caught between the swirling blues of the Aegean and Ionian seas, Kythira is Greece’s very own love island. Myth has it the beautiful goddess Aphrodite was born on the rock of Hyrta – sorry, Cyprus. And you might well believe it when you clap eyes on its loveliness. Despite its chalk-white, cube-stacked Cycladic architecture, Kythira is technically part of the Ionian Islands, but far removed from the cruise ships and crowds of Corfu and Kefalonia.
Here, you’ll be bewitched by deep-cut gorges, beaches forming perfect golden smiles between high cliffs, a sea every shade of blue on the colour chart, and quiet country roads threading through olive, orchard and vine. While you’ll want to see the whitewashed, Venetian castle-topped Chora, the ghostly ruins of medieval Paleochora, the wispy Fonissa falls and dramatic Kalami gorge and beach, part of the deal here is finding a shady cove or taverna and doing diddly squat.
How to get there
Triton Ferries runs daily ferries (1 hour, 15 minutes, £11) between Neapoli in the Peloponnese and the east-coast port of Diakofti.
Where to stay
In a charmingly restored 19th-century mansion, Hotel Margarita (0030 2736 031711; hotel-margarita.com) has ringside views of Chora and doubles from £55
9. Samothraki
When sunset touches Samothraki like a golden caress, silhouetting high mountains and ruins, you can really feel the pulse of the island’s past. Out on its lonesome in the north-eastern Aegean, the island swirls in Homeric myth. Its crowd-puller is the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, a temple the Thracians built to worship early fertility deities around 1000 BC. It is one of Greece’s most enigmatic archaeological wonders. In the museum, you can gawp at an exact replica of the Nike (Winged Victory) monument that once stood here looking out to sea. The original is now in the Louvre.
You can see why the ancients loved this wild isle, with its deep, forested, fern-flecked gorges, roaring streams and cascades (don’t miss the Paradeisos waterfalls). Above it all is cloud-shredding, 5,000ft-high Mount Fengari, the pew from which Poseidon watched the fall of Troy. Go for a hike or explore the cove-indented coast by boat, crash on a powder-soft beach such as Pachia Ammos, or track down a ramshackle taverna to dig into the island speciality: goat.
How to get there
Zante Ferries operates at least one daily ferry (1 hour, 50 minutes, £14.50) from mainland Alexandroupoli during summer.
Where to stay
Hilltop Samothraki Beach Boutique Hotel (0030 25510 95359; samothrakibeach.gr) has sea-view doubles from £55. (minimum three-night stay)
10. Folegandros
Cast adrift in the southern Cyclades, Folegandros is often shunned in favour of nearby isles such as Sifnos, Serifos and Santorini, leaving its drowsy beauty for those willing to go the extra mile. So do. It’s a vision of old Greece, with terraces staggering down to a sea unfurling like blue silk cloth and a road wriggling through countryside, past incense-filled chapels, braying donkeys and ancient ruins. On the south coast, there’s a parade of bays lapped by gin-clear waters that can only be reached on foot or by boat – Livadaki, Agios Nikolaos and Katergo among them. In secluded wilderness near the latter, you’ll find the much-raved-about Gundari, an ultra-chic, five-star boutique pad (double suites with private infinity pools from £600; gundari.com) that has sent the island soaring in the style stakes since opening in summer 2024.
The island’s biggest stunner, however, is clifftop Chora, where the Byzantines and Venetians left their mark. Now it’s a thousand-year-old cat’s cradle of snow-white, bougainvillea-draped lanes, with cafés on the cobblestones. Hike the zig-zagging path up to the pearl-domed Church of Panagia (Virgin Mary), plonked above a ruined sanctuary where Artemis was once worshipped. The sunsets up here are surreal.
How to get there
Seajets has twice-daily boats from Santorini to Folegandros (50 minutes, £59).
Where to stay
The Lemon Tree Houses (0030 6938 443481; lemontreehouses.com) in Ano Meria have slickly designed poolside, sea-view villas from £148.
11. Koufonisia
Small is rather special when it comes to Koufonisia, the titchiest and most laid-back of the Cyclades. This crowd-dodger is actually a trio of islands – one inhabited, two not, all crazily pretty, with sugar-cube architecture and bare, sun-bleached hills. Running through every shade of blue on the spectrum, from aquamarine to deepest indigo, the water here looks Photoshopped. But real, it is.
The island’s east is where the beach-hopping, snorkelling and diving gets exciting. Here you can tick off astonishing bays like rosary beads: Finikas, Fanos and Prani, with pale sands sloping into a sea that feels like you’ve been dropped into a co*cktail glass of blue curaçao. Like the Caribbean but quieter. The best way to reach them is by hopping on a wooden boat from the port. For more solace still, boat it over to the empty beaches of Kato Koufonisi.
How to get there
In summer, daily Seajets ferries link Koufonisia to Mykonos (1 hour, 30 minutes, £72) and Santorini (two hours, £81).
Where to stay
Architect owners designed six-room, minimalist-cool Teal Blue (0030 228 5074570; tealblue.gr), with dazzling sea views and doubles from £128 (minimum three-night stay).
12. Kastellorizo
Gliding into the port of Kastellorizo by ferry is wondrous. With a minaret, ruined castle and riot of neoclassical mansions in Dolly Mixture colours reflecting in its exquisite turquoise bay, the island’s one and only town is a heart-stealer. At the easternmost fringes of the Dodecanese, Kastellorizo is just a wave away from Kas in Turkey – so close, in fact, that locals quip you can smell grilled kebabs if the wind is right.
Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour fell so hard for the island when he stayed that he wrote the song Castellorizon. And nobody is immune to its charms – its history braiding together stories of the Ottomans, Byzantines, Romans, Crusaders, Egyptians, Turks and Venetians, its ancient Paleokastro fortress, and its mellow eastern light. Beaches? Not really. Too rocky. But you’ll never forget leaping off a boat into the sapphire waters of the stalactite-laced Blue Cave.
How to get there
Blue Star Ferries call in twice weekly from Rhodes (three hours, £15). Dodekanisos Seaways ply the same route slightly quicker (2 hours, 30 minutes £33).
Where to stay
Harbour-facing, boho-chic Casa Mediterraneo (0030 22460 49590; casamediterraneohotel.com) has seriously stylish suites from £214.
This article was first published in July 2023, and has been revised and updated.
