Kato Koufonisi

Kato Koufonisi is the uninhabited half of the Koufonisia pair in the Lesser Cyclades, separated from its busier twin Ano (Pano) Koufonisi by a strait that narrows to just 200 metres. It covers 4.3 square kilometres of low, pale rock and scrub, has no road, no village and no permanent population — and that emptiness, twenty minutes by small boat from a beach bar, is exactly what people come for.

An Island Without a Village

The contrast with its neighbour is sharp. Ano Koufonisi covers 5.8 square kilometres and recorded 391 residents at the 2021 census, with hotels, tavernas and a ferry link to Naxos and Piraeus. Kato Koufonisi, a few hundred metres away, has only a handful of rural buildings. Its last permanent residents left in the late 1960s, and the deserted hamlet near the old landing place now consists of a few restored houses and stone stores used seasonally by shepherds and fishermen.

What you meet instead are goats and sheep grazing among the low vegetation, and migratory birds using the island as a stopover. The Lesser Cyclades lie south-southeast of Naxos and west-northwest of Amorgos and comprise Ano Koufonisi, Kato Koufonisi, Irakleia, Schinoussa, Donousa and Keros — of which only four are inhabited at all. The islands passed through Venetian and Ottoman hands before being incorporated into the Greek state in 1830, and the channel between the two Koufonisia was long used as a sheltered hideout by pirates, with whom the local population was not always on unfriendly terms.

The Chapel of Panagia and the Old Settlement

The island's landmark is a small whitewashed chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, standing on a jetty beside the old landing point and built directly against the ruins of an earlier Byzantine church. It was put up secretly in 1651, during Ottoman rule, which explains both its modesty and its position tucked into the shoreline rather than crowning a hill.

It is still in use. Every 15 August, the feast of the Dormition of the Virgin, fishing boats ferry worshippers across from Ano Koufonisi for the island's one genuinely busy day of the year, and the chapel also hosts the occasional wedding and christening. Beside the settlement, the seasonal Venetsanos taverna is the only place to eat on the island — and, since there is no shop, no electricity grid and no drinking water supply, the only source of anything at all.

Beaches and Getting Ashore

Nero is the main beach and the one most visitors see, a broad curve of sand and fine pebble on the southern side where the excursion boats stop. Elsewhere the coast breaks into a string of small coves — Detis, Laki and Pezoulia among them — separated by pale rock and reached on foot along rough paths. A walking track links Nero with the Panagia settlement, passing the viewpoint at Alonistria, from where you can take in half the island, the beach you started from and the bulk of Keros across the water.

There is no ferry and no port infrastructure, so access is by small boat only: water taxis shuttle across from Ano Koufonisi through the day in summer, along with fishing caiques and tourist boats. That single limitation is what has kept the island undeveloped, and it is why many gulet cruises in Greece call in here for a quiet swim stop between the busier Cycladic islands. Bring water and shade — there is very little of either once you leave the taverna.

Keros, the Island Sanctuary Next Door

The mountainous island filling the horizon to the east is Keros, and it is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the Aegean. Keros and the adjoining islet of Dhaskalio together formed the largest settlement and the earliest known maritime sanctuary of the Early Bronze Age Cyclades, dated to roughly 2800–2200 BC. Keros also gave its name to the Keros-Syros culture, the Early Cycladic II phase.

Looting in the 1950s and excavation from 1963, when the archaeologist Christos Doumas investigated the site, revealed an extraordinary deposit: fragments of some 500 marble figurines and around 2,500 marble vessels. Almost none of the pieces fit back together, which led archaeologists to conclude that the objects were deliberately broken on other islands and single fragments carried to Keros over generations as offerings. Later work on Dhaskalio uncovered monumental walling, a stairway and evidence of metalworking, built with stone hauled from Naxos some ten kilometres away. Keros itself is a protected archaeological site rather than a visitor attraction, and its last inhabitants left in 1968 — so for most people it stays exactly what it is from the shore of Kato Koufonisi: a silhouette with a very long memory.