What Is Poros Known For?

Poros holds the ancient sanctuary where one of Athens's most significant political figures met his end, and the lemon groves visible from its harbor give the island an entirely different kind of reputation today.

Poros is known first for the Temple of Poseidon, built in the late 6th or early 5th century BC on a plateau roughly 190 meters above the sea. The sanctuary became the seat of the Kalaurian Amphictyony, an alliance of city-states including Athens, Aegina, and Epidaurus formed for religious and political cooperation, and it doubled as a place of asylum for anyone fleeing persecution. Together with the Temple of Athena Aphaia on Aegina and the Temple of Poseidon at Sounio, it formed a geographic triangle considered significant in ancient Greek religious geography. In 322 BC, the orator Demosthenes, pursued by Macedonian forces following the conquest of Athens, sought refuge here and died at the sanctuary rather than be taken prisoner, a moment still marked as one of the site's most consequential historical episodes.

Poros is equally known for the Lemon Forest, Lemonodasos, holding roughly 30,000 lemon and orange trees on the Peloponnese mainland directly across the narrow strait from the island. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the grove supported a real export trade, sending lemons to cities including Istanbul, Smyrna, and Thessaloniki, and its blossoms still fill the air with fragrance each spring, an atmosphere well known enough to inspire a 1930 novel by the Greek writer Kosmas Politis.

The island has also drawn its share of writers and artists over the years, including poet George Seferis, who compared Poros's narrow channel and waterside houses to Venice, connecting the island by boat to Aegina and Hydra across the wider Saronic Gulf.