Things to do in Kythira

Kythira is awkward to place, and that is most of its character. It lies off the southern tip of the Peloponnese where the Aegean and the Ionian meet, it is administratively grouped with the Ionian islands it is nowhere near, and it looks like neither. It is also large and thinly populated, which in August is a rare combination. What follows is spread across a big island, so read the last paragraph about the car before you plan any of it.

Chora and the kastro. The white village runs along a ridge in the south with a Venetian castle at the end of it, looking down on the harbour of Kapsali and a long way out to sea. It is one of the better castle views in Greece and it is rarely busy, which is a sentence you cannot write about many Venetian castles. Kapsali below it is the summer port, a double bay with tavernas around it.

Mylopotamos, which is the surprise. Kythira is green in the middle and full of water, and nobody expects that. Mylopotamos has a stream running through it, old watermills along the banks, and the Neraida waterfall in a gorge behind the village with a pool you can swim in under the fall. On an island in the southern Aegean that is close to implausible, and it is the single thing most visitors remember.

Kato Chora, next door. An abandoned Venetian fortified village with the lion of Saint Mark still over the gate. It sits next to Mylopotamos, so the waterfall and the empty village belong to the same trip rather than two.

Paleochora, in the northeast. A ruined Byzantine town on a cliff above a gorge, sacked in the sixteenth century and left. Two abandoned towns on one island, from two different centuries and two different powers, is unusual even by Greek standards, and standing in the second one after the first makes the island’s position between empires legible.

The car, which is not optional. A car is essential here. The island is big, the sights are far apart, and several of the beaches need a drive on unsurfaced road. This is one of the clearest yes answers on the site to which islands need a car, and driving in Greece covers the roads you will be on.

How long to give it. Four nights minimum. People who like Kythira stay two weeks and see why the island has a following. Our Kythira guide has the practicalities, the beaches cover a coast with very little development on it, and the group it is filed under is the Ionian islands, which it is nowhere near.