Greece
Antikythera
Twenty souls on the island that yielded civilisation's first computer — Greece pays people to settle.
The ferry approaches a cliff with a handful of white buildings at its base, and you understand immediately why only twenty people live here. The island sits in the strait between Crete and the Peloponnese — one of the most treacherous channels in the Mediterranean — and everything about it says endurance, not comfort. The shipwreck that yielded civilisation's first computer happened in these waters because these waters break ships.
The Antikythera Mechanism — a 2,000-year-old bronze geared device considered the world's first analogue computer — was recovered from a shipwreck off the island in 1901. The mechanism, now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, tracked astronomical positions and eclipses with a sophistication not seen again until medieval clockwork. Fewer than 20 permanent residents remain on Antikythera; the Greek government offered free land, a house, and a monthly stipend in 2019 to attract new settlers. There is one school with no current pupils, one doctor who visits periodically, and a ferry connection that runs twice a week in summer. The island has no tourism infrastructure — visitors sleep in rented rooms and eat at the single taverna.
Solo
An island of twenty people at the edge of habitation — come for the mechanism's origin story, stay for the raw solitude of a place that barely exists on the map.
- The Antikythera Mechanism — a 2,000-year-old bronze geared device considered the world's first analogue computer — was recovered from a shipwreck off the island in 1901.
- Fewer than 20 permanent residents remain — the Greek government offered free land, a house, and a monthly stipend in 2019 to attract new settlers.
- The island sits in the strait between Crete and the Peloponnese — one of the most treacherous shipping channels in the Mediterranean, responsible for the mechanism's shipwreck.
- There is one school (with no current pupils), one doctor who visits periodically, and a ferry connection that runs twice a week in summer.
Whatever the single taverna has cooked — goat stew, horta greens, bread baked that morning.
Fish pulled from the strait between Crete and the Peloponnese, grilled simply with lemon and sea salt.
Santa Maria
Portugal
The Azores' oldest island hides a red clay desert and golden beaches the other islands lack.
Jericoacoara
Brazil
Windswept dunes where the sun melts into the sea from a natural stone arch.
St Ives
England
Light so luminous it lured a century of painters to this harbour of turquoise shallows.
Tulpar-Köl
Kyrgyzstan
Alpine pools at 3,500 metres that mirror a 7,000-metre peak at dawn like shattered glass.
Santorini
Greece
White villages balanced on a caldera rim where the sea has flooded a volcano's shattered heart.
Mykonos
Greece
Windmills turning above a labyrinth of whitewashed lanes where the Aegean nightlife never stops.
Meteora
Greece
Monasteries balanced on sandstone pillars 300 metres above the plain, reached by rope and faith.
Delphi
Greece
Stone terraces climb a sacred mountainside where the ancient world came to hear the oracle speak.