Kea

Four city-states and two great poets of antiquity

In antiquity Kea was not a single community but an archipelago of power divided into four independent city-states: Ioulis, Karthaia, Koressia and Poiessa, each with its own currency and its own government, a rare case among the smaller Cycladic islands. This political vitality went hand in hand with a cultural ferment that, between the 6th and 5th centuries BC, gave birth to the poets Simonides and Bacchylides, among the most influential voices of archaic Greek lyric poetry. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods the island kept a commercial role linked to its strategic position facing Attica, before going through, like the other Cyclades, Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman rule, up to Greek independence in the 19th century.

The Lion of Kea, carved into the rock

Just outside Ioulida, along a path through the vegetation, stands one of the oldest and most striking sculptures of the Cyclades: the Lion of Kea, an enormous archaic feline carved directly into the limestone rock around the 6th century BC. About six metres long, the lion is cut in relief into the natural bedrock and displays the stylised expression typical of archaic Greek sculpture, its mane rendered through geometric incisions. Theories about its original purpose still vary, from symbolic guardian of the city to votive monument, but its solitary presence amid the Mediterranean scrub, free of fences or intrusive structures, remains one of the most striking encounters the island offers its visitors.

The valonia oaks and the acorn trade

Kea is one of the few Cycladic islands dominated not by olive trees but by woods of valonia oak, a tree that produces large acorns with a rough cap once essential to the local economy: rich in tannin, the acorns were gathered and exported for tanning leather, an activity that for much of the 19th century and the early 20th kept the island in a relative prosperity rare among the smaller Cyclades. Today the oak woods, which cover large parts of the interior, contribute to a landscape greener and more shaded than the Cycladic average, and remain an integral part of the island's agricultural identity, even though the acorn trade has now almost entirely died out.

Ayia Irini, a Bronze Age settlement

Right beside Vourkari, on a small promontory, stand the remains of Ayia Irini, one of the most important Bronze Age settlements of the whole northern Aegean. Excavated since the 1960s by the American School of Classical Studies, the site has yielded a fortified settlement already active in the 3rd millennium BC, with multi-storey buildings, a temple in continuous use for over a thousand years and fresco fragments that reveal close contacts with the Minoan civilisation of Crete and with Akrotiri on Santorini. The ruins, freely open to visitors today, remain less known to the wider public than other archaeological sites of the Cyclades, but represent one of the most precious testimonies to the trade relations of the prehistoric Aegean.

The beaches of Kea

• Otzias, a wide, sheltered bay just a few minutes from Ioulida
• Koundouros, jagged coves with calm waters, popular with families
• Pisses, the island's longest sandy beach, surrounded by olive groves
• Gialiskari, small and secluded near Vourkari

When to go to Kea

Thanks to its closeness to Athens, Kea is busiest on summer weekends with Greek visitors, while on weekdays it stays quieter even in high season. The best period runs from May to October, with June and September ideal for those wanting to walk the paved paths without the excessive heat of July and August. As the island can be reached in a little over an hour by ferry, it also lends itself to short stays or off-season visits in the spring and autumn months, when the blooming of the Mediterranean scrub makes the walks to Karthaia or Ayia Irini even more pleasant.