Location

Serifos island, Greece

Serifos island  is part of the western Cycladic group of islands in Greece, south of Kythnos and northwest of Sifnos, located about 170 kilometres (92 nautical miles) ESE of Piraeus.

A small island of 65 sq. km with population about 1,100, still unspoiled by tourism and modernization.  Today it is considered one of the most upcoming  destinations for “off the beaten track” European holiday vacations.

By far the most notable episode in the island’s past is not from history but from mythology: here was where the hero Perseus was said to have used the Gorgon’s head to turn King Polydeuctes to stone, thus saving his mother Danae from the king’s violent advances. Copper and other minerals have been mined here since Minoan times and only stopped being exported in the 1960s; in some places on the island you can still see the straight roads with railway-like iron tracks which were used for animal-hauled ore carts. Serifos was a significant city-stay in classical Greece and played a part in the Persian and subsequent wars. The Romans used it as a place of political exile. In subsequent history, Serifos has been pretty much a backwater. The island is more barren than even most of the Cyclades, despite the fact that it well watered by natural springs.

There are excellent unspoiled beaches, a wonderful whitewashed cubistic traditional Hora (main town) with the reputation of the most beautiful village in the Cycladic islands, a 17^th  century monastery built in the form of a fortress with remarkable ecclesiastical art and many many more small miraculous beauties for one to discover…