Things to do in Thassos

Thassos is a round, densely forested island close to the coast of northern Greece, and its shape decides how you see it. A single ring road runs the whole way around, roughly a hundred kilometres, and almost everything sits on it. The interior is mountain and pine. So a Thassos day is a stretch of that ring plus one turn inland, and this page is what to stop for.

Limenas, which is built on top of an ancient city. The main town on the north coast sits directly on the ancient one, and you do not have to go looking for it: there is an agora, a theatre cut into the hillside above the harbour, and an archaeological museum holding the finds. The acropolis walk above the theatre is the best hour on the island, and it is the one thing to do here if you only do one. Going up gives you the town, the strait and the mainland coast all at once, and the walk itself explains why the ancient city was where it was.

Marble, which is everywhere once you notice it. Thassos has been quarried for white marble since antiquity and still is. You see it in the road cuttings, in the dust on the leaves near the workings, and in the water, because some of the island’s beaches are white for the simple reason that the sand is ground marble. That is a rare thing: a landscape where the geology, the ancient economy and the beach you swim off are the same fact.

Aliki, which is the best single stop on the ring. A double bay on a headland on the southeast, with an ancient marble quarry running straight into the sea and columns still lying where they were cut. It is an archaeological site and a swimming spot at once, and standing among unfinished columns at the waterline is the clearest picture of the island’s trade anyone will give you.

Saliara, the extreme version. Usually called Marble Beach, it is a small cove of brilliant white against clear water, reached down a rough track. Take the track seriously when you decide what to hire; the beauty is real and so is the road.

The mountain villages, which are the other half of the island. Panagia, Potamia and Theologos sit inland with slate roofs and plane trees, and they are noticeably cooler than the coast. That last point is practical rather than scenic: in high summer the interior is where you go at the hottest hour, and the drive up is short from almost anywhere on the ring.

Limenaria, and the mining story. The second town, on the south coast, has the old Speidel mining company building standing above it. It is a reminder that the extraction here was not only ancient, and it gives the south a different character from the archaeological north.

Why the car matters more here than on most islands. Almost everything sits on that hundred-kilometre ring and the villages are inland from it, so this is one of the Greek islands where wheels genuinely change what you can see. It is also unusually easy to bring your own, because the crossing is a short car ferry rather than a flight or an overnight boat. That is why the island fills with cars from the mainland and the Balkans in summer. Which islands need a car is the general question and Thassos is one of the clearest yes answers.

Four or five nights covers the coast and the interior properly. Our Thassos guide has the rest, the beaches sort themselves along the ring, and the group is the north Aegean.