Iraklia

Iraklia is the largest of the Small Cyclades and one of the emptiest inhabited islands in Greece: about 18 square kilometres of hills, footpaths and undeveloped coast, with roughly 140 permanent residents. It lies between Naxos and Ios, and it has never had the harbour or the airport to support large-scale tourism, which is the plain reason it still looks the way it does. For a yacht, that is the appeal — bays that stay empty in August, and a short hop to the rest of the group.

Location and Overview

Together with Koufonisia, Donoussa and Schinoussa, Iraklia makes up the cluster of islands south-east of Naxos known as the Small Cyclades. It is the biggest of the four by area, which on this scale still means a place you can cross on foot in a morning.

The island has two settlements:

• Agios Georgios — the port, in the north, and the larger of the two. Rooms, a few fish tavernas and the island's shops are here, and it is the natural base for anyone arriving by sea.
• Panagia — the Chora, inland at the centre of the island. Older, less visited, and where most of the island's everyday life still happens.

Both are built in ordinary Cycladic fashion: low whitewashed cubes with flat roofs, coloured doors and windows, lanes too narrow for cars. There is no castle town and no grand architecture here, and the interest is in the setting rather than the buildings. Because so little has been developed for visitors, the exchange with locals in Panagia tends to be the unforced kind — a taverna kitchen cooking one thing well, rather than a menu translated into four languages.

The Beaches

Livadi is the longest beach on Iraklia, sandy and shallow, with clear water and easy swimming for children. On the high ground immediately above it stand the ruins of Kastro. Agios Georgios beach, beside the port, is sandy and convenient, with fishing boats moored off it and the village a minute's walk behind.

The southern and western coasts take more effort and repay it. Alimia bay, at the island's south-western tip, holds two sandy beaches reachable only by boat; a German Arado Ar 196 reconnaissance seaplane, lost when British aircraft attacked a German convoy off Iraklia during the Second World War, lies in about 9 metres of water close inshore and is visible with nothing more than a mask. Karvounolakos, between Alimia and Merichas, is a small beach backed by black rock, with water of exceptional clarity. Merichas itself, on the south-eastern side, is a pebbled cove beneath vertical cliffs that fall some 150 metres straight into the sea.

Walking and Ancient Sites

Iraklia is walked rather than driven. Marked paths link the two villages with the beaches, the cave and the ruins, crossing terrain that is properly wild: thyme, bare rock and terraces long out of use. Three things are worth the climb.

• The rock carvings. Known locally as speires, these are spirals and concentric bulls-eye motifs cut into rock faces around the island, dated to the Early Bronze Age, roughly the third millennium BC. Twenty-five have been recorded since the late 1960s, most likely cut with an emery tool. What they were for is still argued over; proposals range from astronomical markers to signs indicating settlements or burial grounds.
• Kastro. On the ridge above Livadi beach, the remains of a fortified settlement built around 323–316 BC. Excavation on the same ground has also turned up material from the third millennium BC, so the site was in use long before the walls went up.
• The Cave of Agios Ioannis. A large chamber of stalactites and stalagmites on the southern side of the island, reached on foot from Panagia. It is one of the more substantial caves in the Cyclades and, unlike most things on Iraklia, needs a torch and decent shoes.

Getting There and When to Go

Ferries connect Iraklia with Piraeus and with Naxos, and smaller local boats link it to the rest of the Small Cyclades and on towards Amorgos. The nearest airport is on Naxos. Under sail the island is an easy detour off the Naxos–Amorgos run, and many gulet cruises in Greece call in here for a night at anchor off Alimia or Livadi before carrying on east.

The climate is standard Aegean: hot, dry summers with almost no rain between June and September, close to fifteen hours of daylight at the height of the season, and August both the hottest month and the one that brings what passes for a crowd on Iraklia. Winters are mild but very quiet, and most rooms and tavernas close.