Astypalea

Astypalea sits at the western edge of the Dodecanese, closer to the Cyclades than to Rhodes, and it looks the part: whitewashed cube houses under a hilltop castle rather than the tiled roofs of the eastern islands. Two lobes of land joined by a thread of coast give it the outline behind its nickname, the Butterfly of the Aegean. The island covers 97 km², measures 18 kilometres end to end and 13 kilometres at its widest.

History

The island takes its name from Astypalaea, a figure in Greek myth carried off by Poseidon. In antiquity it was colonised by Megara, or possibly Epidaurus; a large body of surviving inscriptions records its magistracies, cults and public buildings, and Rome later granted it the status of a free state.

Latin writers knew the island as Stampalia. The Venetian nobleman Giovanni Querini bought it shortly before 1334 and raised a fortress on the ruins of the ancient acropolis above the harbour. His family held Astypalea until 1522, when it passed to the Ottomans, and afterwards added the island's name to their own — the Venetian house of Querini Stampalia. The Querini castle still stands over Chora, its outer walls formed by the backs of the houses built against it, with two churches enclosed inside.

Landscape

The two halves of the island are joined at Stenó, a neck of land roughly 126 metres across with water on either side. Away from it the coast turns steep and rocky, cut by coves easier to reach by boat than by road. The interior is hilly and largely bare, crossed by footpaths that link the villages to the beaches below and give long views over the surrounding sea. The whole coastline can be sailed round comfortably inside a day, which is how most of the harder-to-reach coves get visited.

The villages

• Chora, the capital, climbs the slope beneath the castle in a run of whitewashed houses and blue domes. Eight windmills stand in a row at the entrance to the village; one of them now houses a small multilingual library. The church of Panagia Portaitissa, with its carved wooden screen, stands just below the castle gate, and tavernas, cafes and craft shops fill the lanes further down. Beneath the town lies Kylindra, the largest ancient infant cemetery known anywhere: at least 2,700 newborns and children under two were buried there in ceramic pots between roughly 750 BC and Roman times.
• Analipsi, also called Maltezana, is the island's second settlement, spread around a shallow bay on the eastern lobe with a scatter of small beaches nearby.
• Vathy occupies a nearly enclosed inlet in the north-east that behaves more like a lagoon than open sea — flat water, a handful of houses, a couple of tavernas.
• Livadia lies in a fertile valley a short walk west of Chora, orchards running down to the beach and cafes along the front.

Beaches

Steno, at the isthmus, is split into Mikro and Megalo Steno. The water shelves gently, which makes it the usual choice for families, and each half has a beach bar.

Livadi, the closest beach to Chora, is half organised with sunbeds and half left bare.

Agios Ioannis, on the south-west coast, is a pebble beach reached by boat or on a walk of about half an hour past the chapel that gives it its name. A stream and a small waterfall run down behind the bay, and the ruins of a castle stand on the rock above — probably Byzantine in origin, and held as a refuge until the corsair Hayreddin Barbarossa stormed it in the sixteenth century.

Vatses sits below high cliffs on the south coast. The cave of Negrou, hung with stalactites and stalagmites, is about twenty minutes' walk up from the sand.

Sailing and anchorages

Pera Gialos, the harbour below Chora, is the main port and the ferry arrival point; Analipsi has a smaller, quieter quay. Vathy is the most sheltered anchorage on the island; Maltezana, Agios Fokas and Livadi are all used in settled weather, and Maltezana has the added draw of the ruins on shore. Koutsomiti and Kounoupi, a pair of uninhabited islets off the east coast, are the standard day trip, served by boats that leave Pera Gialos in the late morning; Syrna lies much further out to the south-east and is a passage rather than an excursion.

Astypalea's distance from the main Dodecanese chain is part of what keeps it quiet, and many gulet cruises in Greece call in here on longer runs between the Cyclades and Kos, using Pera Gialos to reprovision before working round the empty southern coast. Sea temperatures average around 25°C (77°F) at the height of summer, and the caves along the cliff line are dived and snorkelled from local boats.

Getting there

Ferries run to Pera Gialos from Piraeus and along the Dodecanese line towards Kalymnos, Kos and Rhodes, and the crossing is long enough that the island stays outside the usual island-hopping circuits. There is also a small national airport on the eastern lobe near Maltezana, with short flights from Athens. Since 2023 Astypalea has been the test bed for a Greek government project with the Volkswagen Group to convert the island's vehicles and public transport to electric power, which is why the hire cars and the municipal minibuses are increasingly battery-driven.

Ruins and other sights

At Tallaras, near Maltezana, stand the remains of a late Roman bath house. Its mosaic floor shows Helios ringed by the signs of the zodiac and personifications of the seasons, and it is the best-preserved ancient floor on the island. An early Christian basilica with mosaic paving survives nearby.

The cave of Negrou carries the usual island stories of pirates and buried treasure. Away from the sites, the summer calendar fills with panigyria — saint's-day feasts with music, dancing and long tables of local food — which are the easiest way to see the island as its residents live it.