Is Skyros Worth Visiting?

Skyros holds one of Europe's oldest carnival traditions, a pre-Christian ritual where men in costumes weighing up to 40 kilos parade through town each February wearing goat masks and belts strung with dozens of copper bells.

Skyros, the largest and southernmost island in the Sporades, developed apart from its neighbors for centuries, and that isolation shows in details found nowhere else in Greece: a rare breed of small horses, thought to descend from the animals depicted on the Parthenon frieze, still roams the island's southern hills, and craftsmen in Chora, the capital, continue traditions of pottery, embroidery, and elaborately carved wooden furniture once passed down as dowry gifts.

Chora climbs a rocky bluff on the east coast, its whitewashed houses too tightly packed for cars, leading up to a Byzantine castle and the Monastery of Agios Georgios, built around 962 AD on the site of an ancient acropolis. More than 300 churches, many privately owned by island families, sit scattered across Skyros, and the Faltaits Museum, housed in a 19th century mansion below the main square, holds folk costumes, ceramics, and objects tracing the island's identity back generations.

The island splits into two distinct halves, a green, pine-forested north around villages like Atsitsa and a rugged, barren south favored by the English poet Rupert Brooke, who died offshore in 1915 and is buried in an olive grove near Treis Boukes Bay. Beaches like Kalogria and Agios Fokas stay uncrowded even in peak summer, and a network of marked trails, including a full loop of the island's own Mount Olympus, crosses both landscapes for hikers.

Skyros has its own small airport with flights from Athens, and ferries connect from Kymi on the island of Evia in about two hours. It suits travelers drawn to craft, folklore, and quiet beaches over resort infrastructure, and three to five days give the island's north and south, along with Chora's museums and workshops, enough time to come together.