Culture
See the summer show at the Slaughterhouse
Walk out along the cliff to the DESTE Foundation's project space for this year's commission, then go gallery-hopping in the lanes on the way back to town.
West of the harbour
Hydra · Things to do
Things to do in Hydra
Beaches, trails, festivals, food and wine: the experiences that make this island its own.
Experiences
Our favourite things to do
Ideas for every kind of day, from a lazy swim to a full-day hike.
Culture
Follow the bohemians
Climb to Kala Pigadia in the upper town, where Leonard Cohen lived, wander the quiet lanes of the 1960s colony, and end at a harbour café at the hour the writers used to gather.
Kala Pigadia and the harbour
Hike
Hike to Profitis Ilias
Climb the stepped mule path through the pines to the mountain monastery for the best view of Hydra, and carry on to the summit if you have the legs.
Mount Eros, above the town
Hike
Walk the coast path to Vlychos
Follow the path along the sea west of town, past the swimming rocks, through Kamini and over the old stone bridge to the beach at Vlychos, then catch a water taxi back.
Hydra Town to Kamini and Vlychos
Beach
Take a water taxi to the far coves
Share a water taxi or catch the beach boat round the empty west coast to the turquoise coves at the island's tip.
Bisti and Agios Nikolaos
Festival
Watch the fireship burn
Come for the Miaoulia in June, when music, races and a night-time re-enactment of the 1821 sea battles end with a burning ship in the harbour and fireworks over the town.
The harbour, June
Festival
Easter at Kamini
On the night of Good Friday, follow the candlelit procession of the epitaphios through Kamini down to the harbour, where it is carried into the sea.
Kamini, Good Friday
Nature
Sail round the island
Hire a boat with a skipper for a day round the coast, stopping in coves that cannot be reached on foot and in the quiet bays across the water.
From the harbour
Only on Hydra
What makes Hydra different
What makes Hydra unlike any other Greek island.
An island without cars
No private cars, scooters or motorbikes are allowed on Hydra; only a few service vehicles move on the island. Bags, groceries and building stone still go up the steps by mule and donkey, and to get to the beaches you walk the coast paths or flag down a water taxi in the harbour.
A bohemian colony in the 1960s
In the early 1960s a few dozen foreign writers, painters and musicians lived on Hydra on next to nothing: the Australian novelists George Johnston and Charmian Clift, the Norwegian Marianne Ihlen and the young Leonard Cohen, who bought a house in the upper town in 1960 and wrote some of his first songs there.
Contemporary art in a slaughterhouse
Since 2009 the collector Dakis Joannou's DESTE Foundation has turned the island's former municipal slaughterhouse, a small stone building on the cliff west of the harbour, into a project space where one artist makes a new work each summer.
The admirals' mansions
The grey stone houses on the slopes above the harbour were built in the decades before 1821 by the ship-owning families who then financed and led the revolutionary fleet: the Kountouriotis brothers, Miaoulis, Tombazis. Several survive almost intact, and one, that of Lazaros Kountouriotis, is a museum.
A fireship burns in the harbour
Every June the Miaoulia festival honours Admiral Andreas Miaoulis and the fireships of the War of Independence. Its climax is a night-time re-enactment in the harbour, when a model of an Ottoman flagship is set alight on the water before the whole town.
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