Skiathos
— — pine forest that walks down to a turquoise bay.
Not only on a wall.
“The greenest of the Sporades, set off the Thessalian coast and ringed by some sixty beaches. Aleppo pines run down to the shallows at Koukounaries, the long crescent at the island's southwest end. The town wraps a small harbour around the Bourtzi headland, where a Venetian-era fort sits above the water. Flights land low over the road at the eastern tip.
Skiathos, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Skiathos is the westernmost of the Northern Sporades, lying off the Pelion peninsula in central Greece. The island covers roughly forty-seven square kilometres and holds a permanent population of about six thousand, concentrated in Skiathos Town on the southeast coast. Ferries reach the port from Volos and Agios Konstantinos on the mainland in two to three hours. The Alexandros Papadiamantis Airport, named for the nineteenth-century novelist born on the island, sits at the eastern tip with one of the shorter commercial runways in Europe at roughly sixteen hundred metres.
Skiathos is known for its beaches, of which the island counts more than sixty. Koukounaries, at the southwest end, runs about a kilometre along a pine-backed crescent and has been a protected Natura 2000 site since the 1990s, screening the lagoon behind it. The water inshore reads pale turquoise over white sand and deepens to a darker blue past the swimming line. Lalaria, on the north coast, is a white-pebble beach reachable only by boat, framed by chalk cliffs and the natural sea arch called Tripia Petra.
The peak season runs from June through September, when daily flights arrive from across northern Europe and ferries from Volos run several times a day. The old town centres on the Bourtzi headland, where a small Venetian-era fort stands at the harbour entrance. The Monastery of Evangelistria, founded in 1794 inland from the town, was where the modern Greek flag was first raised in 1807. Out of season the island stays open but services thin; the ferry line from Volos runs year-round.