Where to stay in Volos

Volos gives you two genuinely different holidays a short distance apart: a working port and university city at sea level, and stone villages with slate roofs on the mountain behind it. Deciding which you want is the whole question, and for a lot of visitors the answer is one night of each.

The waterfront, if the evening is why you came. Volos was rebuilt after earthquakes in the 1950s, so the architecture is largely modern, and the long waterfront promenade is the centre of life. It is also where the tsipouradika are, along the front and in the streets behind it, and that custom is the single best reason to stop in Volos. Basing here means you walk to dinner and dinner happens to you.

Pelion, if the mountain is why you came. The stone villages sit among chestnut and apple orchards: Makrinitsa, Portaria, Tsagarada, Milies, Vizitsa. The east coast below them has the beaches, several of them long and pale. It is a different landscape from the city and a different kind of stay, and it suits anyone who wants the mountain rather than the port.

Which one the trip actually calls for. If Volos is a stop on a longer route, take the waterfront: it is where the ferries and the food are. If Volos is the destination, the mountain is the reason people come back, and a night in a village is the version of Pelion you cannot get on a day trip.

Why the port matters even if you sleep on the mountain. Ferries and hydrofoils to Skiathos, Skopelos and Alonissos leave from here, which makes Volos a natural start or end to a Sporades trip rather than a detour. If the islands are next, sleep near the boat on the last night.

The tsipouradika, and why no address appears. A tsipouradiko serves tsipouro, and every order arrives with a plate of food you did not choose; order again and a different plate comes. There are dozens of these places and they are the custom rather than any one venue, so this page names none. Go to the front or the streets behind it and pick one that is busy.

What is worth an hour, wherever you sleep. The archaeological museum, strong on Neolithic Thessaly and painted grave stelae, and Dimini and Sesklo just outside, two of the most important Neolithic settlements in Europe. The Moutzouris, the old narrow-gauge railway, still runs a tourist service on part of the line between Ano Lechonia and Milies, which is the neat way to connect the two halves of this page.

We name no hotel. Properties in a working city change hands, and the site’s venue standard needs two independent platforms and a review floor this listing does not verify. What lasts is the choice between the front and the mountain. Our Volos guide has the practicalities and things to do covers the tsipouradika, the Neolithic sites and Pelion.