Fourni

Fourni is a small island in the eastern Aegean, boxed in by Ikaria to the west, Samos to the north-east and Patmos away to the south, and for most of its history its value lay in the fact that nobody controlled it. The coast is cut into dozens of coves, which made it a pirate base for as long as there were pirates in the Aegean and a shelter for everyone else before and since.

Geographical Significance

Fourni, also written Fournoi, is the main island of the Fournoi Korseon group. Three of the islands are inhabited: Fournoi itself at 31 square kilometres, Thymaina at 10 and Agios Minas at 2.3, with a scatter of uninhabited islets around them. The municipality recorded 1,343 residents at the 2021 census. In antiquity the group was known as Corsiae or Korseai, which is where the second half of the modern name comes from. Its position between Ikaria, Samos and Patmos put it on the shipping lane between the Dodecanese and the northern Aegean, which is the single fact that explains most of the island's history.

The town

The island's capital shares its name and stands at the head of the main natural harbour, its houses stacked up the slope in a rough amphitheatre. Along the waterfront are fish tavernas working straight off the day's catch, a few bars, and a main street that becomes the square in the evening. Fourni's fishing fleet is large out of all proportion to the population, and it supplies Ikaria and Samos as well as the island itself.

The other settlements are quieter. Chrysomilia, at the northern end, is the second village and is reached by a road along the spine of the island. Kamari and Petrokopio are little more than clusters of houses on their own bays. Thymaina, across the channel, has its own village and school and a boat connection.

Historical Insights of Fourni

Pirate Haven of the Past

The indented coastline gave shelter from the meltemi and hiding places from anyone hunting, and from the late Middle Ages into the nineteenth century Fourni was a working pirate base rather than a story about one. Crews used the coves to wait out weather and to wait for traffic. The tales have gone; the coves are the same, and most of them are still only reachable by boat.

What the sea kept

The same traffic left an extraordinary record on the seabed. Surveys begun in 2015 by Greek and international teams have located close to sixty wrecks in the shallows around the archipelago, fifty-three of them documented by 2017 and more added since. They range from the fourth century BC through the Roman and Byzantine periods to the nineteenth century, and the finds include amphorae from across the Mediterranean and second-century AD Corinthian terracotta lamps. It is the densest known concentration of ancient shipwrecks in the Aegean, and the survey is not finished.

On land

The hill above the main town, at Agios Georgios, carries the remains of a prehistoric wall of unmortared limestone boulders, reused later as the island's classical acropolis; excavation there turned up a temple foundation, a statue base and inscriptions naming the gods of Samothrace. Above Petrokopio Bay is a Roman marble quarry with half-finished architectural blocks left where they were cut and the shore below covered in chippings and offcuts; local tradition holds that stone from here went into the monuments of Ephesus. At Chrysomilia the masonry of a Hellenistic tower survives, known as the Tower of Agia Triada, with traces of a sanctuary thought to be Poseidon's on its northern side.

Navigating the Waters of Fourni

Weather and season

Fourni has a Mediterranean climate. The dry season runs from May to September and the visitors come with it, with July and August the peak. Average highs in those two months are around 33C (92F), taken off in the afternoon by the meltemi.

Anchorages, bays and beaches

Yachts normally go alongside or bow-to at the north-east town quay, in depths of up to 10 metres. Anchoring inside the harbour is unreliable: the bottom is mud over stone and holds badly, and when the meltemi blows it sends a swell in that can make the berth dangerous. In a strong blow the smaller coves down the coast are the better option. Both channels here accelerate the wind - between Fourni and Thymaina the meltemi is squeezed and fights a north-setting current, building a short confused sea, while the channel between Fourni and Samos usually runs a full Beaufort force stronger than the water either side of it. None of that stops the place: Fourni is a popular stop for gulet charter guests exploring Greece who are working their way between Samos and the Dodecanese, because the coves that hid the pirates are the reason to come.

Fourni town has a beach at the edge of the settlement. Kambi, just north, is a sheltered bay with tavernas behind it. Agios Ioannis and Kassaidi are on the south coast, and Kamari Bay on the north-east is the one for snorkelling. The quarry at Petrokopio can be reached on foot or by boat, and the shoreline of chipped marble is as much the sight as the quarry face above it.