Tilos Island

Tilos lies midway between Kos and Rhodes in the Dodecanese, a slender, inverted-S-shaped island roughly 14.5 kilometers long that covers 64.5 square kilometers together with the uninhabited islets of Antitilos and Gaidaros. The 2021 census recorded 746 residents, spread thinly enough to give the island a density of under 12 people per square kilometer, and its terrain mixes a mountainous limestone interior with volcanic lowlands, pumice beds and patches of red lava sand.

Tilos has built a reputation as one of the Mediterranean's cleanest-powered islands: alongside an undersea cable linking it to Kos via Nisyros, it now runs on solar panels, wind turbines and a battery farm that together make its electricity supply fully renewable, part of a broader conservation effort that also earned the island a place in the EU's Natura 2000 network.

Livadia, on the south coast, serves as the main port and the natural base for boats calling at the island, while Megalo Chorio, built in the early 19th century near the ruins of ancient Telos, remains the administrative capital inland. For sailors, Tilos is one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet cruise in Greece, its rocky and pebbled bays offering quiet swimming stops between the busier waters of Kos and Rhodes.