Alonnisos

The Εθνικό Θαλάσσιο Πάρκο Αλοννήσου – Βορείων Σποράδων was created by presidential decree on 16 May 1992, the first protected area of its kind in Greece, and it is mostly sea. About 2,260 square kilometres of it, wrapped around Alonnisos itself and six smaller islands — Peristera, Kyra Panagia, Gioura, Psathoura, Piperi and Skantzoura — plus twenty-two uninhabited islets and rocks. It is split in two. Zone B, the southern 678 square kilometres around the inhabited island, allows swimming, walking and amateur fishing. Zone A, the remaining 1,587 square kilometres to the north and east, is where the rules get serious.

The reason is Monachus monachus, the Mediterranean monk seal: somewhere between eight hundred and a thousand animals survive worldwide, in a handful of disconnected pockets, and Greek waters hold more of them than anywhere else. They pup in sea caves with underwater entrances, which is why a coastline of undercut limestone matters more here than any stretch of beach. The hard centre of the park is Piperi, a 324-metre rock: approach within three nautical miles is forbidden without written authorisation, so almost nobody has stood on it. The prohibition has a second beneficiary — three hundred and fifty to four hundred breeding pairs of Eleonora's falcon, a bird that nests late specifically so that its young are in the nest for the autumn songbird migration. Monitoring is the work of MOm, the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal. The IUCN moved the species from Endangered down to Vulnerable in 2023, which is the closest thing to good news this animal has had in a century.

The islands are limestone almost throughout, which accounts for the caves, except for Psathoura, which is volcanic — black rock, flat, seventeen metres at its highest point, and carrying an 1895 lighthouse taller than the island it stands on and among the tallest in the Aegean. Gioura is the opposite: steep, barren limestone, with a feral population of Capra aegagrus resembling the Cretan kri-kri and, in its flank, the Cyclops Cave. Adamantios Sampson dug it between 1992 and 1996 and found occupation running from the Mesolithic through the Late Neolithic — bone fish-hooks, obsidian, a human skull in the Mesolithic layers, painted pottery of 6000–5500 BC and enough fish bone to argue that people were working these waters eight thousand years ago. On Kyra Panagia there is a monastery still held by Megisti Lavra on Mount Athos, granted to it by the emperor Nikephoros II Phokas in 963 and reopened in 2017 after eight years of restoration, with one monk in residence.

Off Peristera, at twenty metres, lies the wreck of a merchantman that went down in the last quarter of the fifth century BC carrying three to four thousand amphorae — around 126 tonnes, mostly wine from Mende and from Peparethos, modern Skopelos, with black-glazed pottery and bronze tableware stowed among them. At twenty-five to thirty metres of hull it was far larger than classical shipwrecks were assumed to get. A local fisherman, Dimitris Mavrikis, and his son Kostas found it in 1982; systematic excavation began in 1992; in 2020 it opened to recreational divers as Greece's first underwater museum. Alonnisos was ancient Ikos, and the port town is called Patitiri, which means wine press.

What's worth knowing before you go

Patitiri is the gateway and the only real one. Ferries and catamarans run from Volos, from Agios Konstantinos and from Mantoudi on Evia, three to five hours depending on the boat, all of them calling at Skiathos and Skopelos first. There is no airport on Alonnisos, so the practical route by air is Skiathos — Athens is about thirty minutes' flying — and roughly two hours onward by sea. The hilltop Chora was badly damaged by the earthquake of 9 March 1965 and most islanders resettled at the harbour rather than rebuild; the old village was later bought up and restored, and the walk up from Patitiri is the cheapest thing to do here.

June and September are the months. July and August bring the meltemi, and when it blows the day boats to Kyra Panagia and Gioura do not sail, which removes most of the reason for coming; winter schedules thin to something you cannot plan a return flight around. Diving on the Peristera wreck is guided and seasonal, so book it before you book the ferry rather than after.

At the wreck, the cargo is not uniform. Most of the amphorae came from Mende and Peparethos, but a minority were made on Ikos — Alonnisos itself — so the ship had already loaded at the island you are staying on before it went down in the strait just across from it.