Things to do in Astypalaia

Astypalaia sits between the Cyclades and the Dodecanese and looks like the wrong group. Administratively it is Dodecanese; visually it is Cycladic, with a white cubic chora climbing to a Venetian castle on a ridge above the sea. Its other distinguishing feature is its shape: the island is two lobes joined by an isthmus barely a hundred metres wide, which you drive across with sea on both sides. Both facts shape a visit.

The chora and the Querini castle, which is why most people come. Whitewashed houses stack up the hillside to a castle built by the Venetian family that held the island, with a church built into the gatehouse. Below it a row of restored windmills stands along the ridge. It is one of the best-preserved castle villages in the Aegean and, unusually, it is still lived in. That last word is the important one: this is not a restored monument you walk around, it is a village with a castle at the top of it and people in both.

The isthmus at Steno, which is the island’s party trick. A hundred metres of land with sea on either side, and a beach on each side, so you can choose your wind. That is a genuinely useful piece of geography rather than a curiosity: on a windy day you walk across the neck of the island and swim on the other one.

The two halves, and which is which. The west lobe holds the chora, the port at Pera Gialos and the accessible beaches. The east lobe is emptier: rough roads, beaches at Vatses and Kaminakia reached down dirt tracks, and the long run out to Mesa Vathy, a near-landlocked inlet. If you have a day and a vehicle with clearance, the east is what it is for.

The excavation history, which is serious. A Bronze Age and later cemetery on the island has produced significant finds, including an unusual infant burial ground. There is a small archaeological museum where that story is told. It is not a headline sight and it is a real one, and it is the sort of thing an island this remote is rarely credited with.

The windmills. A much-photographed row along the ridge below the castle. They are the shot everybody takes and they are also the thing that makes the chora legible from a distance.

Getting here, and why the island stays quiet. There is a small airport with domestic flights, and ferries on the long Dodecanese and Cyclades routes. Astypalaia is genuinely awkward to reach, which is why it stays quiet, and that is a trade rather than a drawback. Three nights: the chora is a day, the east lobe another, and the connections make a short stop impractical anyway. Our Astypalaia guide has the practicalities, the beaches cover a coast of pebble and small-sand coves, and the group it is filed under is the Dodecanese.