Things to do in Andros

Andros is the green Cyclades island most visitors miss, and it has two things almost no island of its size can offer: a capital built by shipping money, and the best-developed walking network in the Cyclades. Both are worth planning around, and the second is the reason to choose Andros over a prettier neighbour.

Chora, and why it is grander than the island’s size explains. Andros is one of Greece’s historic shipowning islands. From the nineteenth century on, families such as the Goulandris and the Embiricos built merchant fleets that grew into some of the largest in Greek shipping, and the money came home. The result is a capital of neoclassical captains’ mansions, marble-paved streets and a headland town that carries itself like a small city.

The Tourlitis lighthouse. Chora occupies a narrow spit reaching into the sea, and on a rock just off its tip stands a lighthouse built directly on a sea stack, rising straight out of the water. It is the island’s signature image and a durable landmark rather than a seasonal one.

The Goulandris contemporary-art museum, and how to actually visit it. The same maritime wealth bought Andros a serious contemporary-art museum. The Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation was inaugurated in Chora in July 1979, and the foundation describes it as the first contemporary-art museum in Greece. It opens around a temporary exhibition rather than year-round: the season runs roughly from mid-June to late September, with a split timetable that closes over the hottest part of the afternoon and reopens in the evening, and one closed day a week. Check the foundation’s own site for the current exhibition and hours before you plan a day around it.

The other museums, which are the wet-weather half. Chora also holds an archaeological museum and a maritime museum that turns the shipowning history into objects and models, and up in the hills at Ano Pitrofos there is a small olive-oil museum in a restored press. Together they give a midday or wet-weather alternative to the beach that most Cycladic islands cannot match.

The Andros Route, and the numbers most guides get wrong. The island carries a waymarked long-distance path of about 100 km, running the length of the island from north to south, broken into ten daily stages of roughly 7 to 15 km. It sits within a wider network of over 240 km of paths restored and signposted since 2012. In October 2015 it was certified a Leading Quality Trail, Best of Europe by the European Hiking Federation, and Andros was the first island in Europe recognised under the scheme.

Why the higher numbers you will see elsewhere are not wrong so much as different. You will find 150 km, 200 km, even 300 km in various guides, and the honest reason they disagree is that they count different things: cleared paths, old mule tracks, the certified route. This page follows the maintaining body, the volunteer group Andros Routes, rather than averaging the competitors.

What you actually walk, which is more persuasive than any total. Old stone kalderimia between villages, edged with dry-stone walls, dropping through terraced valleys past watermills, arched stone bridges, springs you can drink from and the small waterfalls the island’s water makes possible. Much of the network links village to village, so you can walk from one taverna lunch to the next rather than out and back from a car park.

Timing matters more here than for a beach trip. The best walking is in the shoulder seasons, spring and autumn, when the ground is green, the streams are running and the temperature is kind. High summer is hot and the exposed upper stretches catch the wind. Hiking in Greece is the country picture, the shoulder season the timing, our Andros guide the practicalities, and the beaches the coast.