A country · 609 places · 10 regions
Greece, all of it.
609 curated places across 10 regions — photographed, mapped, and noted with the season each is best in.
The 4 biggest regions — Decentralized Administration of Peloponnese, Western Greece and the Ionian Islands, Decentralized Administration of Attica, Decentralized Administration of the Aegean and Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace — read below as chapters, with 6 more waiting past them.
Chapter I · Decentralized Administration of Peloponnese, Western Greece and the Ionian Islands · 111 places
Decentralized Administration of Peloponnese, Western Greece and the Ionian Islands
Navagio — the Greek word simply means shipwreck — is an exposed cove on the north-west coast of Zakynthos, below the village of Anafonitria and about 30 kilometres from Zakynthos Town. Limestone walls close to 200 metres high wrap the bay on three sides, leaving a single opening to the open Ionian, and there is no path in: every visitor arrives by boat, and every boat has to nose through the same gap. The floor of the cove is white pebble and crushed limestone, the same material as the cliffs, and the water above it turns the luminous milk-blue that has made this one of the most photographed beaches on earth. It is sometimes called Smugglers Cove, and that name is earned. The wreck. The hull lying on its side in the middle of the sand belongs to the Panagiotis, a small coaster that ran aground here in 1980. The accepted account is that she was carrying contraband — cigarettes is the usual claim — was being pursued in bad weather, and was driven into the cove and abandoned. She has sat there ever since, rusting steadily, the deck plating collapsing and the hull settling deeper into the pebbles year by year. Photographs from the 1990s show a far more intact ship than the one on the beach today, and the wreck is now fenced in places because sections of it are structurally unsound. There is no salvage plan; the island's entire tourist iconography now depends on a piece of failed smuggling. The view from above. A signposted road from Anafonitria climbs to a clifftop platform directly over the cove, where a small viewing deck cantilevers out above roughly 200 metres of air. This is where the classic image is taken, looking down on the wreck with the boats arriving as white specks. The platform has been rebuilt and re-fenced several times, and the ground around it is unstable; going beyond the barriers for a better angle has killed people. Late afternoon light is warmest from up here, while the beach itself photographs best from a boat around the middle of the day. Access, closures and risk. Boats run from Porto Vromi, the closest departure point, in about fifteen minutes; from Agios Nikolaos in the north-east the crossing takes an hour or so, and full-day trips from Zakynthos Town and Alykes combine the cove with the Blue Caves at Cape Skinari. The cliffs are actively shedding rock. In September 2018 a substantial cliff collapse sent a wave through the bay, capsizing boats and injuring swimmers, and since then the authorities have repeatedly restricted or suspended landings while geologists assess the walls; in some seasons boats have been permitted only to hold offshore rather than to set passengers down. Anyone planning the trip should check what is currently allowed rather than assume a landing is possible, and should treat the marked exclusion zones under the cliffs as the safety measures they are. What the visit is actually like. In July and August the cove receives a continuous rotation of tour boats, each allotted a short window on the sand — often twenty to forty minutes — which means the beach is simultaneously crowded and hurried. There are no facilities of any kind: no shade beyond the cliff shadow, no water, no toilets, no lifeguard. The pebbles are large and reflect heat, the sea is deep and cold a few metres out, and the cliff walls put the sand in shadow by mid-afternoon, so the window for the famous colour is narrow. Early departures and the shoulder months are the difference between a memorable half hour and a queue. The bay is also part of the wider marine environment of Zakynthos, whose southern beaches are core nesting grounds for loggerhead turtles protected within the National Marine Park. For years the clifftop was also used for organised parachute and base-jumping events, film shoots and advertising campaigns, which is part of how a cove with no road, no village and no facilities became one of the most recognisable images in European tourism. It has never appeared as a film location in the way the Greek islands nearby have; its fame is entirely photographic. Getting there and timing. Zakynthos airport lies just south of the island capital and takes summer charters from across Europe plus year-round Athens flights; ferries cross from Kyllini in the Peloponnese in about an hour. Driving to Porto Vromi takes roughly 45 minutes from Zakynthos Town on a good but winding road through Maries. Boat operators run from May to October and stop entirely in winter, when the north-west swell makes the cove unapproachable. June and September give calm water, warm air and a fraction of the August traffic; the first departure of the day, whatever the month, is the one worth taking.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter II · Decentralized Administration of Attica · 82 places
Decentralized Administration of Attica
The Erechtheion is a late fifth-century BCE Ionic temple on the north side of the Acropolis, distinguished by the Porch of the Caryatids — a portico whose roof is supported by six draped female figures in place of columns. The building housed several sacred sites of early Athenian religion on a rocky terrace of uneven elevation, a challenge its architects resolved with split-level construction. The caryatids on display are copies; the originals are held in the Acropolis Museum.
✦ March to May, September to November · $$
Chapter III · Decentralized Administration of the Aegean · 80 places
Decentralized Administration of the Aegean
Fira is the capital of Santorini, built along the eastern lip of the caldera about 260 metres directly above the sea, roughly halfway down the island's crescent. From the rim the ground drops in a near-vertical wall of stratified pumice, ash and lava to the old port at Skala, with the volcanic islets of Nea Kameni and Palea Kameni in the middle distance and Therasia closing the view to the north-west. Behind the rim the land slopes gently east toward the airport and the vineyards, so the town has two entirely different faces: a theatrical western edge of terraces and blue domes, and an ordinary Cycladic grid of shops, banks and bus stops a hundred metres inland. The caldera underfoot. The cliff is a cross-section of the eruption that shaped the Aegean. Around 1600 BC the Minoan eruption ejected tens of cubic kilometres of material, buried the Bronze Age town at Akrotiri under metres of pumice and left the collapsed crater that the sea flooded. The white bands visible below the town are that pumice; the darker layers are earlier flows. The volcano is not finished — Nea Kameni, the black cone in the middle of the bay, was built up by eruptions between 1707 and 1950, and boat trips land there for the walk to the steaming craters. The 1956 Amorgos earthquake, magnitude 7.5, destroyed much of Fira, and a good deal of what looks old was rebuilt after it. Getting up and down. Three routes connect the rim to the old port, 220 metres below. The cable car, financed by the shipowner Evangelos Nomikos and opened in 1982, runs six cabins on a three-minute ride and is the fastest option, though queues after a cruise tender can be long. The zig-zag donkey path of 587 steps is the historic route and still worked by mules, a practice that has drawn sustained criticism over animal welfare and is now regulated by weight limits. Walking the steps on foot is free, hard on the knees downhill and demanding uphill, and unpleasant in the heat of the afternoon. At the bottom, Skala is a strip of quay with a few tavernas where tenders land. Museums worth the entry. Fira holds Santorini's two significant collections. The Museum of Prehistoric Thera displays the finds from Akrotiri — wall paintings, painted ceramics, imported Cretan and Egyptian objects, and the small gold ibex figurine discovered there in 1999 in near-perfect condition. The Archaeological Museum covers the later Greek and Roman city of Thera on the mountain to the south-east. Both are within a few minutes of the main square. The Catholic quarter above the town is a survival of the Duchy of Naxos and later Venetian rule, with the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, a Dominican convent and the Lazarist buildings that now house the Megaro Gyzi cultural centre, whose photographic archive of the 1956 earthquake is the best record of it anywhere. On screen. Santorini's cliff towns supply the opening act of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, the 2003 sequel directed by Jan de Bont, in which an earthquake off the island exposes Alexander the Great's Luna Temple; the production spent six days shooting on the island before moving to Hong Kong, north Wales, Kenya and soundstages in Britain where the temple interiors were built. The island also carried the Greek half of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which began filming here in May 2004, with most of its village work in Oia and Ammoudi at the northern tip. Fira's role in both is the caldera itself — the wall of white houses on a black cliff that no set can reproduce. Eating, drinking and walking out. The rim between Fira and Firostefani carries the best of the restaurants, and the island's wine deserves attention: Santorini's ungrafted assyrtiko vines are trained into low basket shapes called kouloura to shelter the fruit from the wind, producing a bone-dry, high-acid white with a protected designation, plus the sun-dried sweet vinsanto. Several wineries on the road to Pyrgos and Megalochori receive visitors. The signature walk starts here: the caldera rim path north through Firostefani and Imerovigli, past the rock of Skaros with its ruined Venetian castle, and on to Oia, about ten kilometres and three to four hours, best done early with a bus back. Getting there and timing. The island's airport is six kilometres east, with year-round Athens flights and summer routes across Europe; ferries dock at Athinios, eight kilometres south-west of Fira, where buses and taxis meet arrivals. Fira is the hub of the island bus network, with services to Oia, Perissa, Kamari, Akrotiri and the port. April, May, late September and October give comfortable temperatures and thinner crowds; July and August are hot, expensive and heavily booked, and the rim is uncomfortably busy on multi-ship days.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter IV · Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace · 56 places
Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace
Thessaloniki is Greece's second city, situated at the head of the Thermaic Gulf, with a compact historic core containing Byzantine churches, Ottoman mosques, and a Roman-era forum within a short walking distance of each other. The White Tower, a sixteenth-century Ottoman fortification on the waterfront, has become the city's defining landmark. The upper town, enclosed within Byzantine walls, preserves timber-framed houses and offers panoramic views down to the harbour and across to Mount Olympus on clear days.
✦ April to June, September to November · $$
Regions of Greece
- Decentralized Administration of Peloponnese, Western Greece and the Ionian Islands111
- Decentralized Administration of Attica82
- Decentralized Administration of the Aegean80
- Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace56
- Decentralized Administration of Crete43
- Epirus Region28
- Decentralized Administration of Thessaly and Central Greece24
- Thessaly14
- Decentralized Administration of Epirus and Western Macedonia7
- monastic community of Mount Athos2
Every place in Greece
