The artists’ island — a single town of stone sea-captain mansions stacked around a small horseshoe harbour. No cars; donkeys and feet only.
Hydra is a long thin rock fifty kilometres south of the Peloponnese coast, with a single small horseshoe-shaped harbour on the north side and a single town of stacked stone houses climbing the slopes around it. There are no cars; transport is by foot, donkey or water-taxi.
The town has been protected as a single national-monument zone since 1962 — no advertising, no neon, no new construction outside the historical envelope; the result is the most architecturally coherent small port in the Mediterranean. The 18th- and 19th-century sea-captain mansions (the archontika of the Tombazis, Voulgaris and Kountouriotis families) climb the hills as pinkish-grey limestone-block houses with white-painted door-and-window frames, sitting above a horseshoe of harbour-front cafés. Hydra was the home of the painter Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas (1906–1994), of the writer Kenneth Koch, of Leonard Cohen (he bought a 1797 house here in 1960 and kept it until his death), and of the long-running international Hydra School Project. The DESTE Foundation Slaughterhouse (a contemporary art space converted from a 19th-century slaughterhouse on a small headland east of the town, run by the collector Dakis Joannou) shows a major new commission every June through September. Combine an architectural town walk, a long fish-and-Greek-wine lunch at Kodylenia, a sunset swim and a sundowner at Caprice and Hydra is the most reliably-beautiful Saronic.
A Hydra day.
Gate E8; 08:30 departure; 10:00 in Hydra harbour.
Two-hour walk through the archontika and up the marble steps; the Voulgaris and Kountouriotis houses; the views back over the harbour.
Pre-booked terrace table; whole grilled fish; three hours; €60 per head.
Half-hour walk along the coast path east; an hour with the year's commission.
Stone-platform swim back near the harbour; an hour in the water; €0.
Aperol on the harbour-front; the boats lit; the closing image.
Hour and a half back to Piraeus; metro home.
Across the gulf.
Twenty minutes' hydrofoil south — the pine island.
Twenty minutes' hydrofoil north — the lemon island.
Hour and a half — the harbour.
Twenty minutes by water-taxi — the small mainland village opposite Hydra.
Hour's walk east of town — the small beach and beach hotel.
Tell us a little about the trip you want — pace, who's coming, how you'd like to spend your mornings. We'll build the days.
