Hydra (island)

Where it sits. Hydra is a long, dry ridge of rock in the Saronic Gulf, about 50 square kilometres in area, lying close to the eastern coast of the Argolid in the Peloponnese and roughly 65 kilometres from Piraeus. Almost the entire population of some 1,900 lives in one place: Hydra Port, a natural harbour on the north coast around which the town rises in a steep amphitheatre of stone houses. There is almost no flat ground, very little water — the island historically depended on cisterns and tankers — and few trees on the upper slopes. The effect from an arriving boat is theatrical: a grey and ochre town stacked on bare rock, with cannon still trained on the harbour mouth from two bastions.

No cars. Hydra's defining rule is that motor vehicles are banned. There are no private cars, no motorbikes and no scooters; a small number of municipal service vehicles are the only exceptions. Transport is by mule and donkey — several hundred working animals live on the island and carry everything from luggage to cement — by water taxi around the coast, and on foot. Stepped lanes climb from the harbour in every direction, and any accommodation above the second or third tier means a hard walk with bags. This is not a heritage gimmick but a long-standing local decision, and it is the single biggest reason the town has kept its eighteenth-century form intact while comparable Greek harbours have been rebuilt around parking.

A merchant fleet and a revolution. Hydra's wealth came from shipping. Through the late eighteenth century Hydriot captains ran grain out of the Black Sea and profited enormously from running the blockades of the Napoleonic Wars, and they spent the money on the stone mansions — archontika — that still dominate the slope: the Tombazis, Tsamados, Boudouris and Koundouriotis houses, built with Venetian and Genoese craftsmanship in a severe grey stone quite unlike Cycladic whitewash. When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821 the island converted that fleet into a navy, contributing well over a hundred armed ships and commanders including Andreas Miaoulis, and effectively bankrupting itself in the process. The Lazaros Koundouriotis mansion is now a branch of the National Historical Museum; the Tsamados house holds the merchant marine academy; and the Miaoulia festival each June ends with a mock fireship burning in the harbour.

On screen. Hydra carried most of Boy on a Dolphin, the 1957 adventure directed by Jean Negulesco with Alan Ladd, Clifton Webb and Sophia Loren in her first English-language role — and the first Hollywood feature ever shot in Greece. Loren plays a sponge diver from this island who finds an ancient bronze on the seabed, and the harbour, the stone lanes and the surrounding water do the work throughout, with establishing shots borrowed from Athens, Rhodes and Delos, one sequence at Meteora, and interiors completed at Cinecittà in Rome. The film opened Greece as a location to American production and put Hydra in front of an international audience five years before Jules Dassin brought another crew here for Phaedra. The island's second wave of fame was literary rather than cinematic: Leonard Cohen bought a house on the hill in 1960, lived here on and off through the decade with Marianne Ihlen, and wrote a good deal of his early work in it.

Swimming and walking. There is no sandy beach of any size. Islanders swim off concrete platforms and rocks at Spilia, immediately beside the harbour, and at Hydronetta beneath the western bastion; Kamini and Vlychos, twenty and thirty minutes west on the coast path, have pebble shores and tavernas, and water taxis run to Bisti and Agios Nikolaos at the far western end. Inland, mule tracks climb to the monastery of Profitis Ilias at around 500 metres, an hour and a half of steady ascent from town with the whole Saronic Gulf laid out at the top, and continue to the convent of Agia Efpraxia. The coastal path east to Mandraki is easier and shorter.

Getting there and timing. High-speed catamarans and hydrofoils leave Piraeus several times daily and take between 90 minutes and two hours; there is no airport and no car ferry, which is the point. Day-trippers arrive mid-morning and leave in the late afternoon, so the harbour is at its most pleasant before ten and after six. Easter here is exceptional, with processions through the lanes and at Kamini. April to June and September to October give warm weather, working restaurants and manageable numbers; August is busy and expensive, and winter is quiet but well connected, since Athens is close enough for weekend visitors year-round.