Best Time to Visit Naxos Island

Naxos has a longer usable season than most of the Cyclades, because it is big enough and green enough to give you something to do on the days when the beach is not the answer. The short version: late May to mid-June and the whole of September are the best weeks; July and August are hot, busy and windy; and unlike Mykonos or Santorini the island stays inhabited and largely open through the winter.

Month by month

• May to mid-June: daytime temperatures in the low to mid twenties, the interior still green, walking at its best and prices well below peak. The sea is the catch — it is still cool for most of this window and does not really warm up until late June.
• July and August: the hottest stretch. July averages a daily high close to 27°C, August is marginally warmer, and peaks around 30°C are normal rather than exceptional. Sea temperature reaches roughly 23-24°C, its annual maximum. This is also when the meltemi is at its most insistent.
• September: for most purposes the best month on the island. The sea is at its warmest, the wind slackens, the crowds thin out after the first week, and the agricultural festivals start.
• October to April: quiet. Rain arrives from late October, most seasonal businesses shut, and the island goes back to its resident population of around 20,000. Carnival, in February or March, is the one substantial winter event.

The meltemi, and why it decides your plans

The meltemi is the dry north wind of the Aegean summer. It runs from roughly mid-May to mid-September and is at its most persistent in July and August, and in the central Cyclades — Naxos included — it regularly reaches force 7 to 8. That is a serious wind for a small boat, not a cooling breeze, and it deserves to be planned around rather than hoped away. It typically builds through the afternoon and drops overnight, though it can also settle in and blow for days without a break.

Two consequences follow. The first is comfortable: the wind is the reason August on Naxos is bearable at all, and the reason the west-coast beaches have become a windsurfing destination. The second is logistical. In high summer the meltemi can cancel ferry crossings for a day at a time, so reading it correctly becomes a skipper's job, which is why so many visitors explore this coast by private gulet charter instead of building an itinerary around a timetable that the weather may not honour.

The coast, and when the water is worth it

The sand is on the west coast: Agios Georgios on the edge of Chora, then Agios Prokopios and Agia Anna further south. They face away from the worst of the north wind, which is what keeps them usable in midsummer when more exposed shores are unpleasant. The water peaks near 24°C in August and stays comfortable well into October, so the swimming season outlasts the tourist season by several weeks. Boats from Naxos town also run out to the Small Cyclades — Iraklia, Schinoussa and Koufonisia — where the coves have no road access at all; those trips are a June to September proposition.

Inland: the argument for coming outside August

Naxos has an interior, which is unusual in this island group, and the interior rewards the cooler months. Mount Zas at 1,001 metres is the highest peak in the Cyclades, and the standard route up starts from Filoti; it is a far better walk in May or October than in the August heat. Apeiranthos, known locally as T'Aperathou, is built of grey marble, has kept its own dialect and holds a cluster of small museums. The Temple of Demeter at Gyroulas near Sangri and the Byzantine churches of the Tragaia valley are the two things most worth hiring a car for, and both are better walked in spring or autumn than at midday in high summer.

Festivals and the calendar

The Naxos Festival runs through the summer at Bazeos Tower near Sangri — a seventeenth-century tower that began as the monastery of Timios Stavros — with concerts, exhibitions and theatre. Village panigiria, the saint's day feasts, are scattered across the summer months and are the least staged thing on the island's calendar. The harvest festivals follow in late summer and early autumn. Carnival falls in the weeks before Lent, in February or March, and in Apeiranthos and Filoti it still involves costumed, bell-wearing groups rather than a parade laid on for visitors.

What is on the table, and when

Naxos is the most agriculturally self-sufficient island in the Cyclades, and the season shows in the food. Graviera, the island's hard cheese, and the potatoes grown in its sandy soil are available year-round. Kitron, the liqueur made from the citron tree, is distilled at Halki in the Tragaia valley and can be tasted there whenever the distillery is open. Late summer and early autumn are when the produce is freshest and the village feasts are actually running, which is one more argument for September over July.