Cyclades · Art, culture and natural beauty
Milos
Milos is the volcanic island that gave the world the Venus de Milo and kept its own beauty quiet. On our Cyclades routes it is the hidden chapter guests talk about most: a sculpted coastline of white rock and blue coves, best read slowly from the deck of a boat.
Milos is home of the famed Venus de Milo, and until recently far fewer people had heard of the island than of its statue. That imbalance is the traveller’s gain: a dramatic volcanic coastline, a bewitching little capital and a history out of proportion to the island’s size, all still relatively off the radar.
The island behind the Venus
You know the statue. She has stood in the Louvre since the 19th century, remade by Rodin and Dali, printed on posters and stamped on the seal of a surgeons’ society, one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture in existence. She was found here, buried in the soil of Milos, by the amateur French archaeologist Oliver Voutier in 1820. While Aphrodite toured the world, the island that held her kept quiet.
Explore Milos
The coast of Milos is volcanic sculpture. The bottle-green swimming hole at Papafragas, the undulating white cliffs of Sarakiniko, the sea caves of Kleftiko, the boathouses wedged between rock and water at Mandrakia: the island runs to more than sixty beaches, and hardly two of them alike. Inland it keeps catacombs counted among the most significant early Christian sites outside Rome, the remains of an ancient amphitheatre, a lofty castle and a buzzy, likeable capital in Plaka.
Mandrakia
Our pick for the best photograph on Milos: fishermen’s houses caught between rock and sea. While you are there, Medusa sets a fine table; try the octopus.
Sarakiniko
Santorini has its Red Beach and Crete its pink sand, but Milos answers with the moonscape of Sarakiniko, white rock poured over the shoreline. We think it is the most spectacular of the lot.
Tsigrado
A secluded ribbon of sand between cliffs on the southern coast. The climb down is not for the faint of heart, which is precisely why it stays quiet.
Pairing Milos
Milos pairs naturally with Mykonos, Ios and Sifnos on a Cyclades route, and it is the island we most often argue for when guests ask what they should not miss.
Known first-hand
Our best picks on Milos
- Best Sight Klima & Kastro
Klima is the colourful fishing village where syrmata, the boathouses of the fishermen, line the water's edge. Climb to the ruins of Kastro above Plaka for a full turn of the island and the old quarter where life used to happen, then stay for the sunset.
- Best Hidden Spot Three Crosses Monument
Of the island's ten marked hiking routes, our favourite lesser-known climb ends at the Three Crosses, with panoramic views over Triovasalos and the villages. There is a real chance you will have the hill to yourself.
- Best Dining Oh Hamos
Through a leaf-covered doorway into a garden of hanging plants and bougainvillea: handwritten menus, customised crockery and real care on every plate. If you eat meat, order the gourounopoulo metimezako, piglet cooked for hours in molasses, mustard and thyme.
- Best Bar Akri
Perched above the port of Adamas with unbroken views of the Aegean, serious cocktails and an in-house DJ who understands the hour.
- Best Daytrip Oneiro with Captain Elias
Boat trips are how we read Greece, and this one is among the very best: a day around the island to Kleftiko, the old pirates' hideout of caves, rock arches and water so clear it hardly seems there.
- Best Wine Kostantakis Cave Winery
The island's one winery, and a memorable one: honest local wine tasted inside a cave.
A short flight from Athens, or the ferry down the western Cyclades line. Early summer and September are made for the coves.
Design
Design your experience
Tell us the occasion, the season and who is coming. One of our Epicureans will come back with a first sketch of Milos, and will tell you if another island suits your dates better.