Thasos

Thasos is almost circular, about 380 square kilometres, and unusually green for the Aegean, with pine and chestnut forest covering slopes that rise to 1,204 metres at Ipsario. Its wealth in antiquity came from gold and from white marble, still quarried today, and the ancient city at Limenas has a theatre above the harbour, an agora, sanctuaries and a wall circuit that can be walked over the acropolis with sea views. A single road circles the island in about a hundred kilometres, passing beaches of white marble sand at Golden Beach, Paradise and Marble Beach, mountain villages such as Theologos and Panagia with slate roofs, and the Giola rock pool on the wild east coast. Honey, olive oil and thick pine forest give the interior a different character from the resort coast.

History

Thasos was inhabited from the Palaeolithic onwards; the Neolithic settlement at Limenaria is close in its finds to the Drama plain on the mainland, while in the Early Bronze Age the island looked to the Cyclades and Sporades, and at Skala Sotiros a small settlement was ringed by a strong wall with large anthropomorphic stelai built into it. Phoenicians, probably drawn by its gold mines, founded a temple to Melqart, later merged with Heracles, and Herodotus visited the island's sanctuary of Heracles in the 5th century BC; around 650 BC, or a little earlier, Greeks from Paros founded a colony here (Wikipedia, Thasos).

What you'll find

• The ancient city - theatre, agora and walls at Limenas above the harbour.
• The marble beaches - white sand and clear water at several bays.
• The mountain villages - Theologos and Panagia with slate roofs and springs.
• The coast road - a hundred-kilometre circuit around the island.

When to go

May, June and September for warm sea and quieter roads. July and August are busy with Balkan visitors, and accommodation prices rise. Winter is very quiet, with reduced ferries.

Before you go

Parts of the coast are heavily developed with package hotels and beach bars. Marble quarrying scars some hillsides. Wildfires have burned significant areas of the island's forest in recent years, and the damage is visible in places.

Nearby

Kavala and Keramoti are the mainland ferry ports; the Nestos delta lies opposite on the coast.

Key facts