If you are planning a Greek odyssey this year, you are not alone. With its pristine seas, family-friendly golden-sand beaches, world-class archaeological sites and myriad culinary delights, it is no surprise that the birthplace of democracy – and its more than 6,000 idyllic islands – is one of the top destinations for British travellers. According to the latest Post Office Travel Money Spending Report published in June, Greece was also dubbed the top value-for-money destination for British tourists for 2024.
So what is it that makes Greece so enduringly popular? At only four hours by plane from the UK, ease of access plays a major role, as does the incredible variety it offers. Whether it is sultry Santorini with its black-sand beaches and towering volcanic caldera; bohemian Hydra with its traffic-free cobbled streets and elegant stone mansions; or Crete, the country’s largest island, famed for its hospitality, each island has its own special charm.
But the mainland has plenty to offer, too: capital Athens, framed by its age-old Acropolis and criss-crossed by labyrinthine streets, is a magnet for culture vultures, while lively second city Thessaloniki, clustered around its old port and the crenellated turrets of its 15th-century White Tower, is a food lover’s paradise.
From hopping between islands on a local-run cruise to scaling Mount Olympus or diving to see shipwrecks, here is our pick of 30 great ways to experience Greece and the best holidays to book in 2024.
Find the perfect holiday in Greece:
- Best holidays for culture and history
- Best holidays for couples
- Best holidays for families
- Best holiday for adventure and exploring
- Best holidays for foodies
Best for culture seekers
Visit the Acropolis
Shining like a marble-clad beacon from the top of its dramatic limestone crag, Athens’s ancient citadel (Acropolis means “upper city”) with its iconic 5th century BC temple the Parthenon is amagnet for most visitors to Greece.
It’s well worth the hefty climb to see sights such as the temple dedicated to goddess of victory Athena Nike and the 5,000-seat theatre that Roman senator Herodes Atticus built in memory of his wife, Annia Regilla.
It also overlooks the port of Piraeus, and you can see the purple smudge of the Peloponnese peninsula beyond. Wily travellers who want to avoid the cruise crowds will arrive early and buy an Athens City Pass, which gives skip-the-line access.
Athens City Pass, including free hop-on hop-off bus pass, Turbo Pass, from £55 per day (turbopass.com).
Tour the Sacred Site ofDelos
Backed by Mount Kynthos, mythological birthplace of Greek god Apollo, Delos lies in isolated splendour just a 30-minute ferry ride from Mykonos’s bustling old town. Once deemed so sacred that nobody was allowed to die or give birth here, this uninhabited islet is now a strikingly well-conserved open-air museum.
Visitors come to stroll around the 7th-century BC Terrace of the Lions, with its lion head fountains and colonnaded porticoes, visit the stunning 7,000-seat marble-crafted amphitheatre, and marvel at pottery, figurines and sculptures in the artefact-packed museum, before climbing Mount Kynthos to enjoy a God’s-eye of Mykonos and its chaplet of surrounding islands.
Half-day guided tours of Delos, leaving from Mykonos with local company Delos Tours, from £24 (delostours.gr).
Hang out with the knights on Rhodes
Once the legendary site of the Colossus statue – one of the ancient world’s Seven Wonders – the dazzling Dodecanese island of Rhodes is home to the largest medieval town in Europe to have beencontinually inhabited for the past 2,000 years.
Entered via seven stone gates within walls that encircle the cobbled streets of the entire old town, Rhodes, while stillhome to some 6,000 residents, is aliving museum where ancient mosques, Byzantine churches and ancient houses of the Knights Templar rub shoulders with souvenir souks, vine-shaded kafeneions and atmospheric boutique hotels.
Ottoman-era boutique hotel Marco Polo Mansion (marcopolomansion.gr) has doubles from £83, breakfast included. Plan the perfect holiday in Rhodes with our travel guide.
Explore the ancient theatre of Epidavros
Once revered as a place where miracles were commonplace, Epidavros – about 19 miles east of the Peloponnese seasidecity of Nafplio – centres on the Sanctuary of Asclepius, the mythical god of medicine who is said to have brought Hippolytus and others back from the dead.
Perhaps the real miracle here is one of conservation: strolling around this beautifully preserved World Heritage site, with its temples and columns and sporting stadium clustered around a 14,000-seater amphitheatre built in the 4th century BC, is like stepping back in time. This is especially true during the world-renowned Epidavros Arts Festival, from May to October, when – just like Hippolytus – the ancient theatre returns to life once more.
Key Tours (keytours.gr) have guided day trips from Athens to Epidavros and the neighbouring site of Mycenae from £49 per person.
Consult the Oracle atDelphi
Scattered like a giant jigsaw puzzle among citrus-scented pine forests andsilver-leaved olive groves 100 milesnorth of Athens, the sacred site of Delphi revolves around the salmon- hued Doric pillars of its 8th-century BC Sanctuary of Apollo, which was once home to the celebrated Oracle.
According to legend, this sacred site beneath the peaks of Mount Parnassus was the omphalos, or centre of the world, and pilgrims once flocked here to consult priestess Pythia before taking important decisions.
A 14-room archaeological museum houses many of the important findings from this Pan-Hellenic sanctuary, including the famous bronze sculpture of the charioteer of Delphi.
Athens Delphi Tour (athensdelphitour.com) runs guided Delphi tours from Athens from £57 per person
Visit the birthplace of the Olympic Games
The modern Olympics might be based on the principles of excellence, respect and friendship, but the ancient games, dating back to around 3,000 years ago, were rather more cutthroat: the only rules were “no biting or gouging”.
The Unesco-listed archaeological site of Olympia – which gave the games their name when the event was launched there in 776 BC – lies on the western coast of the Peloponnese peninsula of southern Greece and is an easy day trip from Athens.
The light-filled museum, with its statue of Hermes of Praxiteles and the Nike of Paionios is well worth visiting; as is the marble-hewn temple of Zeus, which once held a 43ft-high gold statueof the deity, to whom the games were dedicated.
But the biggest thrill is to jog out along the 650ft/200m-long race track, where most of those Olympic events took place in antiquity.
My Olympia Tour (myolympiatour.com) offers full-day tours from Athens from £65 per person.
Explore fascinating Syros
With its marble-paved streets, sumptuous culinary specialities, and an opera house (said to be modelled on Milan’s La Scala), Syros is one of the most fascinating Cyclades islands. Surprisingly, although it’s a favourite with Greeks this island, which is just a 30-minute ferry hop away from bling-loving sister Mykonos, is rarely on the radar of foreign tourists. Working to conserve the island’s cultural legacy not-for-profit association Hermoupolis Heritage organises a range of unique excursions, including countryside tours in a vintage Greek Mercedes and sailing trips in a traditional wooden trehantiri boat followed by lazy lunch in a traditional seafood taverna.
Boat trips in a traditional vessel with Hermoupolis Heritage (hermoupolisheritage.com) from £25 per person, based on five people sharing a boat.
Discover the Blue City and the archaeological site of Philippi
Known as the Blue City because of its picturesque old town built on a rocky headland, which seems to float in the sparkling waters of the surrounding Aegean Sea , Kavala has been a haven for refugees for centuries. A melting pot of different cultures this fascinating Macedonian city with its imposing stone fortresses, sweet-scented tobacco factories and food specialities, ranging from wine-cooked cuttlefish to wild boar stew, also sits at the heart of a region which is littered with fascinating archaeological sites. These include the theatres and monumental temples of the Unesco World Heritage site of Philippi, which was founded in 356BC by the father of Alexander the Great.
Discover Greece (discovergreece.com) has five-day itineraries to Kavala and neighbouring island Thassos, including suggestions on where to stay from £67 per person per night.
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Best for couples
Experience the buzzing nightlife of Mykonos
You can expect to rub shoulders with the likes of Lady Gaga or Leonardo DiCaprio as you hop between the sleek sand beaches and hip mega-clubs that have earned magical Mykonos its nickname of “Greece’s Ibiza”.
The lanes of the island’s compact capital Chora are the island’s nightlife hub, where designer boutiques rub shoulders with glitzy champagne bars like Queen of Mykonos and Scarpa.
When the sun goes down over those celebrated windmills, the party crowd heads for the beach. Choose from Nammos in yacht-studded Psarou Bay, where the Amex Black card set come to sup on Mediterranean fusion food; the dusky sands of Paradise beach, littered with cool clubs helmed by world-class DJs; or Paraga beach, nestled between the two, where sophisticated Soho House-owned club Scorpios offers unique co*cktails and starry clientele.
Click & Boat (clickandboat.com) charters yachts for the day (and night) from £1,114. Plan the perfect holiday in Mykonos with our travel guide.
Take a day trip to Hydra
Just an hour’s ferry ride from main port Piraeus, the Saronic island of Hydra has attracted a bohemian crowd for decades: Picasso and Chagall came here to paint, Maria Callas stayed in one of the magnificent stone mansions circling the harbour, and Leonard Cohen, who owned a house in Hydra’s maze of back streets, wrote Bird on the Wire here.
Apart from 300 churches and a handful of hip galleries, the real charm of Greece’s answer to Porto Fino is the lack of traffic: only donkeys can climb the steep streets that rise from the waterfront, so peace is guaranteed here.
Purchase tickets for the 85-minute ferry ride from Athens to Hydra at ferryhopper.com; from £33 one-way.
Hop on a Santorini sunsetcruise
Seeing the sun set in a blaze of vanilla and raspberry over Santorini’s wax-white villages and celebrated volcanic caldera is a big tick on most traveller’s bucket list, but the best way to do it is to eschew the crowds at Oia’s celebrated castle sunset spot, and hop on a half-day catamaran cruise instead.
Leaving from Vlychada’s petite fishing port, roomy yachts whisk you outfor a quick dip in the magma-heated hotsprings near the barren blacked Kameni islands – formed after a series ofvolcanic eruptions – before gliding ina stately procession with other catamarans to Amoudi Bay, which providesa ringside seat for what is surelyone of the world’s most spectacular sunsets.
Santorini Sailing (santorinisailing.com) has a sunset cruise from £37 per person, including drinks and snacks.
Visit the island of MammaMia!
Greeks in-the-know have flocked to the talc-soft beaches and pristine seas of Skopelos for decades, but this lush green island – dubbed “Mykonos of theSporades” because of its chic beach bars and glass-clear seas – only really gained fame in the UK when Streep, Brosnan and co came here in 2007 to film Mamma Mia!.
Even if you’re not a fan of the movie, a Mamma Mia!-themed boat tour – whose highlights include a visit to pine-shaded Kastani beach, where many keyscenes were filmed, and a trip to the picturesque rock-top chapel of Agios Ioannis Kastri, where Donna and Samfinally married – is a great way to discover the island.
Skiathos Cruises (skiathoscruises.gr) has Mamma Mia!-themed tours from £39 per person.
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Best for families
Dive into Greece’s ‘Parthenon of Shipwrecks’
Dubbed ‘The Parthenon of Shipwrecks’, the Mediterranean’s first underwater museum on the Sporades island of Alonissos is home to half a dozen ships that were wrecked off this notoriously dangerous coast, including a merchant vessel that sank with its cargo of wine amphorae some time in the 5th century.
Non-divers will have just as much fun exploring capital Chora’s labyrinthine alleys or heading out in a boat to explore pristine waters of the National Marine Park of Alonissos where endangered Mediterranean monk seal come to breed.
Alonissos Sea Colours (alonissos-seacolours.gr) organises dives to see the Parthenon of Shipwrecks from £67, equipment included.
Discover the Durrells’Corfu
The Ionian island where Prince Philip was born might be renowned for its Unesco-listed Old Town, medieval monasteries and Venetian fortresses, but lately Corfu has been most in the limelight thanks to UK TV series The Durrells, which was based on the real-life family’s experiences there from 1936 until the start of the Second World War.
The best way to discover the island through the eyes of its most eccentric family is to hop on a half-day Durrell tour, where highlights include exploring the alleys of Corfu’s Old Town in Gerry’s footsteps, and visiting the White House where Lawrence Durrell once lived with enigmatic wife, Nancy.
Blue Tours (bluetours.gr) offers a private half-day Durrell island tour from £73 per person based on a group of six participants. Plan the perfect holiday in Corfu with our travel guide.
Seek out authentic Greece on an idyllic cruise
Operating sailing trips throughout Greece for more than 5o years, local- owned company Variety Cruises offer a wide range of expert-led adventures. Whether it’s themed cruises to sip and sample the wines of Greece followed by gourmet pairing dinners onboard, cultural voyages to discover archaeological highlights including Mycenae and Monemvasia, or sailing adventures taking in a plethora of lesser-known islands, this is the perfect way to soak up a big slice of authentic Greece.
Variety Cruises (varietycruises.com) offers a seven-day Unexplored Greece cruise from £2,080 per person person from Athens, including full-board.
Enjoy the beaches of Paros
From endless stretches of toddler-friendly golden sands lapped by bath-warm seas, to sheltered coves shaded by stately tamarisk trees, the Cyclades island of Paros has some of the Aegean’s best beaches for families.
Within easy walking distance of the capital Parikia, Livadia’s quiet beach is perfect for younger kids, while Kolymbithres, with its wave-sculpted rocks near Naoussa, or Pounda’s golden-sand beach lined with kite- and wind-surfing facilities, are ideal for active families.
Luxury resort Cove Paros (coveparos.gr) has rooms overlooking Naoussa’s Agios Anagyroi beach from £411 per night, including breakfast
Lounge on the pink sands of Elafonisi beach
Greece’s largest island, ever-popular Crete is famed for its stunning seashore, ringed with palm-fringed stretches of silky sand, pretty pebble-strewn coves and lively resorts. If you’ve tired of the crowds, however, head for the gloriously isolated beach of Elafonisi, reached via a potholed track from the village of Vathi some 50 miles north of Chania’s Venetian harbour.
The beach itself is a paradise ofrose-tinted sands and windswept dunes, dotted with sweet-scented seadaffodils and separated from themain beach by a shallow toddler-friendly lagoon. Facilities are limited here, however, so be sure to take plenty of water and snacks.
Elafonisi is a roughly 90-minute drivefrom Chania Town. Kriti Plus(kritiplus.gr) has car hire from £32 per day.
Meet the Minoans atKnossos
Whether you’re for or against Sir Arthur Evans’s controversial reconstitution of the 1,300-room Palace of Knossos, it doesn’t alter the majesty ofthis 2000 BC Minoan site. Just a short drive from Cretan capital Heraklion, this is the site where Theseus killed the fearsome Minotaur – or so the legend goes.
Testament to thesophistication of this mysterious civilisation, which reached its peak some 4,000 years ago, there are shrines, storerooms and banquet hallsand Europe’s oldest throne room.
To see the ornate frescoes – including the celebrated dolphin murals – whichonce adorned the walls of thisancient complex, you’ll have tohead to Heraklion’s two-storey archaeological museum, which houses theworld’s best collection of Minoan artefacts.
Knossos Palace Tickets (knossospalacetickets.com) offers combined tickets for Knossos Palace and Heraklion archaeological museum from £35 per person.
Go island hopping in theCyclades
What could be more thrilling than skipping over dolphin-studded seas to a different island every few days? The once grungy port of Piraeus – now home to a string of hip art galleries and linked to the centre of Athens by metro – is a cosmopolitan hub for dozens of island ferries, which travel regularly between islands.
From sailing into the heart ofSantorini’s volcanic caldera to arriving in Ios’s tiny beach-lined, café-dotted port, or chugging past the cypress-furred hillsides and sandy coves of Corfu, island hopping is surely the ultimate – and ultimately sustainable – Greek adventure.
Ferry Hopper (ferryhopper.com) sellstickets for multiple routes from £22 per person.
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Best for adventure
Visit the monasteries ofMeteora
Rising from the lush Thessaly plains near Kalambaka like giant dollops of Play-Doh, the Meteora – with its weirdand wonderful sandstone pillars housing 24 Byzantine monasteries – isone of Greece’s most magical naturalmonuments.
Clinging to the highest pinnacle overlooking the storied Corinthian Gulf, the 14th-century Holy Monastery of the Metamorphosis, with its frescos representing the transfiguration and its artefact-packed museum, is thelynchpin of this holy complex, bestexplored via a network of hiking trails that have been used by the monks for centuries.
Visit Meteora (visitmeteora.travel) has full-day trips from Athens by train from £58 per person.
Seek out Zakynthos’s shipwreck bay
It might be one of the world’s most Instagrammable shipwrecks, but that doesn’t detract from the sheer splendour of this site on Zakynthos’s wild west coast. Here, dramatically steep cliffs frame a sandy cove where the rusted hulk of MV Panagiotis was washed up in the 1980s.
Skinari, on the island’s northern tip, is the starting point for half-day boat excursions to Navagio – as the beach is known locally – and boats generally stop off at the Blue Caves, so-called because of the vivid turquoise hue of the surrounding seas. It is also possible to drive to the Navagio viewpoint near Volimes village, from which views of the shipwreck are spectacular.
The Potamitis Brothers (potamitisbros.gr) offer half-day tours to Navagio from£21 per person. Plan the perfect holiday in Zakynthos with our travel guide.
Explore the Saronic gulf aboard a private yacht
If you’re visiting the Greek capital, cruising the seven Saronic Gulf islands sandwiched between the Peloponnese and Piraeus in a private yacht is an ideal add-on adventure.
Seven-day cruises glide lazily through glittering turquoise seas to make calls at Aegina, with its ancient Temple of Aphaia and pretty harbour lined with seafood tavernas; Hydra, with its hip art galleries and cool cafés; or Spetses, the lush and lovely island famed for its fish a la spetsiota – fish fillets fried in breadcrumbs and served with a garlicky tomato sauce – where wacky whodunit Glass Onion, starring Daniel Craig, Kate Hudson and Edward Norton, was recently filmed.
Istion Luxury Yachts (istionluxuryyachts.com) has private crewed yacht hire, with a sailing yacht sleeping six, available from £6,750 per week.
Climb Mount Olympus
Legend has it that no human could climb Mount Olympus, mythical home of the 12 Olympian gods – and it wasn’t until 1913 that a team of Swiss climbers finally managed to reach the 9,570 ft-high peak.
It’s still a challenging climb to reach Mytikas peak, but amateur hikers who’d like to experience a taste of adventure can drive to Prionia – the highest location that’s accessible by car – then make the strenuous hike to Skala, one of the lower peaks, to get a glimpse of the spectacular views thatonce upon a time only the Gods could enjoy.
Trail Path (trailpath.gr) offers small‑group two-day hiking tours, leaving from Thessaloniki, from £152 per person.
Enjoy sunset at the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion
Known to Greeks as the paraliaki, the Athenian Riviera – lined with stylish bars and hip restaurants – stretches from chic yachtie hangout Palaio Faliro in northern Athens to the marble-pillared splendour of Cape Sounion some 18 miles away.
Teetering on the southernmost tip of the Attic peninsula, this high-flung sanctuary sacred to the goddess Athena is also the best place on the peninsula for watching the sun setin a pool of scarlet over one of the world’s most fabled seas.
Athens Walking Tours (athenswalkingtours.gr) offer Sunset Tours of CapeSounion from £72 per person. Plan the perfect trip to Athens with our travel guide.
Hike Crete’s Samaria Gorge
Stretching for 10 miles from high in the Lefka Ori (White Mountains) to the pebbles of Agia Roumeli’s peaceful beach far below, Samaria Gorge, Europe’s longest canyon, is just a short drive from the harbour of Crete’s second town, Chania.
But be warned – you’ll need to be fairly fit to tackle the five-hour hike through this spectacular boulder-strewn ravine; an easier alternative is to take a boat from Hora Sfakion to Agia Roumeli and hike through the bottom end of the gorge.
Entrance tickets to Samaria Gorge cost from £4.20 (samaria.gr).
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Best for curious gourmands
Take a foodie tour of Greece’s second city
Often overlooked in favour of Athens, the port city of Thessaloniki – radiating out in an easy-to-navigate grid of streets from its historic centre and Ladadika district – has long been known as gourmet heaven by Greeks.
Since Greece is the home of the healthy Mediterranean diet, foodie indulgence is fairly guilt-free, which is just as well: from cinnamon and custard filo pastry bougatsa – best enjoyed at the century-old pastry shop Bantis – to the meat-skewer treat souvlaki and meze snacks served in a string of low-key family-owned taverna known as koutoukia, there is plenty to tempt those tastebuds.
Eat and Walk (eatandwalk.gr) runs half-day food tours of Thessaloniki from £34 per person.
Taste meze in the Cretancapital
Whether it is vlita (steamed wild herbs served with a squeeze of lemon and lashings of olive oil) or crispy twice-baked dakos barley rusks smothered in tomato pulp and sprinkled with salty myzithra cheese, Cretan food specialties abound – but it can be tough to find them without help.
A three-hour gourmet walking tour with an experienced local guide through the busy backstreets of Crete’s capital city Heraklion is the perfect way to get to grips with the food: youcan stop off to meet the man behind the city’s best tripe restaurant, sample the island’s succulent thyme honey, and eat plenty of meze snacks en route.
Tours By Locals (toursbylocals.com) runs full-day Cretan Diet Past and Present private food tours from £101 per person. Plan the perfect holiday in Crete with our travel guide.
Explore Captain Corelli’s island
Home to some of Greece’s most beautiful beaches and a raft of succulent foodie delights – including must-trys kreatopita (crispy mutton and beef-stuffed pie) and moustopita (a rich cakemade with grape pomace) – the Ionian isle of Kefalonia was a star long before the 2001 film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was filmed here.
Nevertheless, a tour based on the Hollywood movie is still a good way to discover the island’s best-loved sights – it includes a dizzying descent along the cliffs to horseshoe-shaped Myrtos beach (where a Second World War bomb was discovered in the film) and a hike out to 11th-century Agios Fanentes chapel, where the opening scenes of the feast of St Gerasimos were filmed.
Outdoor Kefalonia (outdoorkefalonia.com) organises six-hour Corelli’s Kefalonia jeep tours from £67 per person.
Meet the women of Karpathos
Perched on the top of Profit Ilias, one of the highest mountains on the Dodecanese island of Karpathos, the village of Olympos is inhabited by the members of a matriarchal society which is unique in Greece.
In this remote village, which was cut off from the rest of the island until a road was built in the 1970’s, women still wear the colourful traditional costumes – including the stivania kidskin boots that are made here – and they still speak an ancient Doric dialect.
Olympos Archipelagos Hotel (olymposarchipelagoskarpathos.com) has clean comfortable rooms near the main square from £51 per night, including breakfast.
Learn to live the long life on Ikaria
Known as “the place where people forget to die”, Ikaria is one of only five Blue Zone regions in the world – places where people live longer than average – with one in three Ikarians living until well into their 90s.
Apart from its laidback way of life and a rough mountainous terrain that makes exercise inevitable, experts say the secret to the islanders’ longevity istheir diet, which includes lavish use of vegetables, whole grains, olive oil and goats’ milk.
These ingredients come together in dishes such as soufiko (the local equivalent of ratatouille), and prasino kolaro me patates (wild greens with potatoes), accompanied by a few glasses of Ikaria’s robust red wine.
Sunvil (sunvil.co.uk) offers week-long self-catering holidays on Ikaria from £992 per person, including flights
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This article was first published in January 2023, and has been revised and updated.
