Halki

Halki lies just 9 kilometres west of Rhodes, a compact island of roughly 28 square kilometres that takes its name from chalkos, the Greek word for copper, after the mining that once sustained it. Today the trade is long gone, and the island's economy runs on fishing and tourism instead. The 2021 census recorded 475 residents, though the year-round population is closer to 330, almost all living in the harbour village of Emborio. It is the smallest inhabited island of the Dodecanese, and its municipality also takes in a scatter of uninhabited islets, the largest of them Alimia.

Copper, Knights and Sponges

Halki has been inhabited since prehistoric times, and the copper workings that gave the island its name were already active in antiquity. From around 700 BC it sat within the orbit of Rhodes and the Rhodian Hexapolis, passed to Rome from 164 BC, and then to the Byzantine Empire, before centuries of raiding and short-lived Venetian and Genoese control. From the 14th century the Knights of St John, ruling from Rhodes, held the island; Ottoman rule followed from 1523 to 1912, then Italian administration, and the Dodecanese was formally united with Greece only in 1948. The island's real prosperity, and the buildings that survive from it, came in the second half of the 19th century, when maritime trade and above all sponge diving brought money ashore.

Chorio and the Castle

Above Emborio sits Chorio, the old hilltop settlement that was largely abandoned once the fear of pirate raids passed, watched over by a ruined castle built by the Knights of St John in the 14th century on a bare crag; the chapel inside the walls still holds some of its original frescoes. Beyond Chorio a track continues west across the island to the monastery of Agios Ioannis Alarga, about eight kilometres from the harbour on a high plateau, with a quiet walled courtyard shaded by an enormous cypress and simple rooms that visitors can still use overnight. The interior is rugged and largely treeless, rising to 601 metres, and the paths linking chapels, terraces and threshing floors are the main reason walkers come here at all.

The Harbour Village

Emborio is built amphitheatrically around its natural harbour, a single village of neoclassical stone houses with courtyards paved in chochlakia, the black-and-white pebble mosaic of the Dodecanese. The church of Agios Nikolaos, built in 1861, stands at its centre with painted decoration inside and a tall bell tower that is visible from well out to sea. In the 20th century many islanders emigrated to Tarpon Springs, Florida, joining the sponge-diving community there — a link still felt in Halki's identity today, and one reason the population fell so far. Fresh water remains a constraint: it is shipped in from Rhodes or produced locally by desalination.

A Green Island, and How to Reach It

More recently Halki has made headlines for its energy. A one-megawatt solar array was installed in 2021, and the island became the launch site of Greece's GR-eco Islands programme when prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis presented it there in November of that year. By March 2023 Halki was reported to be self-sufficient in renewable electricity; the park generates about 1.8 gigawatt-hours annually, is credited with cutting carbon dioxide emissions by roughly 2,576 tonnes, and passes the benefit to residents through virtual net metering. Getting here means flying to Rhodes and then taking the ferry, a crossing of well under an hour, and day boats run across to uninhabited Alimia with its own Knights' castle and two chapels. Emborio's harbour is sheltered enough that many gulet cruises in Greece call in here, giving guests an easy walk from the pier into a village that has changed remarkably little.