Why Agkistri
There are islands in the Saronic Gulf that have the good fortune to be close enough to Athens to be genuinely and easily accessible and far enough from the mainstream of international tourism to have preserved, in the face of decades of weekend visitors and summer crowds, a quality of natural beauty and authentic island atmosphere that the larger and more famous islands of the group have long since been compelled to compromise. Agkistri is one of these islands — and it is, for those who discover it with open eyes, one of the most completely and most unexpectedly delightful small islands in the entire Saronic world. Barely 28 kilometres from Piraeus, reachable by high-speed hydrofoil in 40 minutes and by conventional ferry in just over an hour, lying six kilometres west of Aigina in the heart of the Saronic Gulf, Agkistri is a tiny island of just 13 square kilometres that covers almost every centimetre of its surface with a dense, fragrant pine forest of extraordinary beauty — a forest that descends, on every coast, directly to the water’s edge and that gives the island, from the sea on the approach, the appearance of an emerald set in the most brilliant blue of the Saronic Gulf.
The island’s name — Agkistri, meaning “fishing hook” in Greek — is explained, in the island’s own preferred mythology, not by any piscatory association but by the experience of the travellers who have always reached its shores throughout the centuries: visitors who arrived, as all visitors do, with the intention of a short stay, and who found themselves captured, hooked, by the island’s beauty, its calm, its pine-scented air, and its extraordinary water, and grew — as the local legend has it — an irresistible longing to stay permanently. Whether the name derives from the island’s shape on a map, from its ancient role as a harbour for fishing vessels, or from this gentler mythological explanation of irresistibility, it is entirely accurate in its implication: Agkistri is an island that captures its visitors with a completeness and an ease that its modest size and its proximity to the mainland would not, on paper, suggest.
The island’s permanent community of just over 1,100 residents lives in three villages — Megalochori, the capital, its traditional stone houses and narrow cobbled lanes preserving the authentic Saronic village character in its most complete and least altered form; Skala, the main port and the island’s principal tourist settlement, its beach and harbour front animated in summer with the energy of a small resort that has managed the transition to tourism without losing its essentially Greek character; and Limenaria, the smallest and most traditional of the three, set in a pine-forested bay on the southern coast that receives the fewest visitors and preserves the most complete quiet. Between these three villages, the pine-forested interior and the varied coastline of the island — its rocky northern cliffs, its sandy western beaches, its dramatic southern coves — compose a landscape of considerable natural beauty entirely accessible on foot and by bicycle, the island’s single coastal road of approximately ten kilometres connecting all three settlements in a circuit entirely manageable at any pace and in any season. That accessibility, combined with the extraordinary quality of the water that surrounds the island and the particular sweetness of the pine-scented Saronic air, is the essence of the Agkistri experience: an island small enough to know completely in a few days, beautiful enough to justify returning to season after season, and close enough to Athens to make every visit feel like the most reasonable and most rewarding decision of the year.
What to Do and What to See
Agkistri’s pleasures are of the direct, uncomplicated, entirely satisfying kind that a small, naturally beautiful island close to a great city ought to offer — swimming in extraordinary water, walking through fragrant pine forest, eating well at a taverna table that looks directly onto the sea, and experiencing the particular quality of peace and natural beauty that this small green island provides with a generosity entirely disproportionate to its modest size.
Megalochori — The Island Capital
The main village of Agkistri — Megalochori, also known as Mylos — is the most completely and most authentically traditional settlement on the island, its character shaped by the natural harbour from which its community has drawn its livelihood for centuries and by the architectural traditions of the Saronic island world that it shares with Aigina and the other islands of the group. The village’s stone houses, narrow cobbled lanes, traditional kafeneions, and the working harbour where small fishing boats are still moored alongside the pleasure craft and the local ferries compose a picture of genuine Saronic island life of great warmth and great visual charm. The village beach at Megalochori — a sandy and pebble beach of good quality in a naturally sheltered bay — is animated in summer with local bathers and visitors, and the excellent tavernas and restaurants of the harbour front make Megalochori the finest place on the island for an evening meal: a long, unhurried dinner of fresh seafood and Saronic wine at a table that looks directly onto the harbour water and the lights of Aigina on the horizon is one of the most completely and most genuinely pleasurable dining experiences in the Saronic Gulf.
Skala — The Main Port and Beach
On the northeastern coast of Agkistri, the village of Skala is the island’s principal port and its most visited settlement — a small resort of considerable charm whose beach of fine sand and shallow, crystal-clear water is among the finest easily accessible beaches in the Saronic Gulf. The beach at Skala is long, well maintained, and of excellent natural quality — its shallow gradient and calm water making it particularly well suited to families with young children, and its proximity to the port ensuring that it is lively, well serviced, and animated with the particular energy of an island beach close enough to Athens to attract a broad and varied summer community. The harbour front of Skala, lined with seafood restaurants, cafés, and the small shops and rental outlets that equip the island’s visitors for a day on the water, is pleasant and well kept — and the experience of arriving at Skala by ferry from Piraeus on a summer morning, stepping off the gangway onto the harbour quay with the pine forest above and the turquoise water of the beach immediately ahead, is one of the most immediately and most completely gratifying arrivals in the Saronic Gulf.
Aponissos — The Island Lagoon
On the western coast of Agkistri, the natural lagoon and beach of Aponissos is the most completely beautiful and most completely distinctive natural feature on the island — a sheltered sea lagoon of extraordinary turquoise water, its entrance flanked by pine-covered headlands and its interior calm enough in all but the strongest winds to provide swimming conditions of rare quality and rare beauty. A small rocky islet in the middle of the bay — connected to the main island by a narrow land bridge in certain conditions of tide and sea — completes a natural composition of such complete and such immediately captivating Saronic beauty that Aponissos has become, quite justifiably, the most photographed and most celebrated single natural feature on Agkistri. The path to Aponissos from Megalochori passes through the pine forest on the western slopes of the island — fragrant, shaded, and beautiful — and is one of the finest short walks on the island, its combination of pine forest walking and the extraordinary bay at its end making it the single most recommended excursion for any visitor to Agkistri.
Dragonera and Halikiada — The Wild Beaches
Beyond Aponissos on the western and southern coast, the beaches of Dragonera and Halikiada offer a more dramatic and more completely natural Saronic beach experience — their rocky approaches and pebbled shores framed by the pine forest above and the open Saronic Gulf below in a landscape of elemental coastal beauty of great intensity and great quietness. Dragonera is a small, dramatically set pebble beach in a rocky cove of great natural beauty, its clear water of extraordinary depth and colour and its overall atmosphere of secluded natural completeness making it one of the most rewarding and most genuinely wild beach destinations in the Saronic islands. Halikiada, on the eastern coast, is a longer beach of mixed sand and pebble — less secluded than Dragonera but of great natural quality and excellent swimming — its pine forest backdrop and clear water composing a beach environment of straightforward, entirely genuine Saronic beauty.
Walking and Cycling the Island
Agkistri is one of the finest small islands in the Saronic Gulf for walking and cycling — its single coastal road of approximately ten kilometres connecting all three villages in a circuit of great variety and great natural beauty, and its network of forest paths through the pine-covered interior offering walks of exceptional quality and exceptional fragrance entirely characteristic of the island’s natural personality. The coastal road walk between Skala and Megalochori — a twenty-minute walk along the northern shore with the sea visible through the pines to one side and the forested hill rising to the other — is the most characteristically Agkistri experience available on foot: a walk of great simple beauty through a landscape that smells, in the heat of a summer morning, of the pine resin and the sea in a combination entirely characteristic of the best and the most genuinely Greek of all Saronic island experiences. Bicycles and electric bicycles are available for hire in both Skala and Megalochori, and a circuit of the entire island by bicycle — the full coastal road with the forest paths of the interior — can be completed comfortably in a single day and constitutes one of the most completely enjoyable ways of knowing Agkistri that any means of transport allows.
Limenaria and the Southern Coast
On the southern coast of Agkistri, the village of Limenaria is the smallest, the quietest, and the most completely traditional of the island’s three settlements — a village of genuine community life, surrounded on all sides by pine forest, its small harbour and its beach of good natural quality receiving a fraction of the visitors that animate Skala and Megalochori in high summer. The beach at Mariza, on the southwestern coast near Limenaria, is among the finest and most naturally beautiful on the island — a remote, pine-backed cove of pale pebble and crystal water accessible by the southern coastal road or by the forest paths of the island’s interior, its combination of complete natural solitude and extraordinary swimming quality making it the preferred destination of those who know the island well and who value the particular pleasure of a Saronic beach that is entirely their own. The coastline between Limenaria and the southwestern tip of the island — undeveloped, pine-fringed, accessible primarily by sea — is the wildest and most completely natural stretch of Agkistri’s coastline, and exploring it by dinghy or kayak on a calm summer morning is one of the most rewarding and most quietly beautiful coastal experiences in the Saronic Gulf.
Why Choose Agkistri
Agkistri is the island for every Athenian who wants the finest and most completely restorative weekend escape in the Saronic Gulf — an island of extraordinary natural beauty, exceptional swimming, fragrant pine forest, and genuine Saronic warmth available in under an hour from Piraeus and costing, in every respect, a fraction of what the more famous islands of the Cyclades demand of their visitors in time, money, and the patience required to share their beaches with the crowds that their fame inevitably attracts. It is for families who want the finest safe, shallow swimming beach in the Saronic at Skala. It is for couples who want the pine-scented walk to Aponissos and the evening meal at a harbour front table in Megalochori. It is for walkers and cyclists who want the most beautiful small island circuit in the Saronic Gulf. And it is for those who simply want to be somewhere green and beautiful and genuinely quiet — somewhere the water is turquoise and clear and the pine trees come down to the shore and the evenings are long and warm and unhurried in the way that only a small Greek island in the Saronic Gulf, in the full heat of the summer, can be.
For sailing itineraries in the Saronic Gulf, Agkistri is a natural and effortless addition to any programme that includes Aigina — the ten-minute crossing by small boat between the two islands one of the shortest and most completely rewarding inter-island passages in the Saronic, and the contrast between Aigina’s historical depth and Agkistri’s natural simplicity creating a two-island combination of exceptional variety and exceptional completeness. The anchorages of Agkistri — the bay of Megalochori, the lagoon of Aponissos in calm conditions, the southern coves near Limenaria — are of good natural quality and provide the sailor with a sequence of overnight stops and daytime swimming destinations of great variety and great natural beauty.
What Agkistri ultimately gives the visitor who is willing to be captured by it — hooked, as the island’s own mythology insists — is the rarest and most precious gift that a small island close to a great city can offer: genuine natural beauty in genuine natural quiet, available without a long journey, without a complicated itinerary, and without the costs and the compromises that the most famous Greek islands now exact from their visitors as the price of their beauty. The pine forest comes down to the turquoise water and the taverna tables are set on the harbour front and the evenings are warm and the ferry back to Piraeus leaves tomorrow morning. There is no particular reason to be on any other island. There is every reason to be here.
