Tilos Island Greece
Frequently Asked Questions
At Livadia, the island's only coastal town, off which only smaller ships anchor. A crescent bay, a pebble beach fringed with tamarisks, and a square where fishermen sell the morning catch.
The Livadia seafront walk, nearly 2 km along the bay, then a quarter-hour drive to Megalo Chorio and the climb to the Knights' castle. The nearby palaeontology museum rounds out the morning.
The tiny capital clinging to the mountainside, a quarter of an hour by taxi or shuttle from the landing. Flowered lanes, whitewashed houses and pebbled courtyards take half an hour; the castle climb adds another.
Yes, dwarf elephants barely 1.5 metres tall, whose bones were uncovered in the Charkadio cave. The small palaeontology museum near Megalo Chorio displays the fossils, the last elephants of Europe.
A fortress of the Knights of Saint John perched above the rooftops of Megalo Chorio. From the walls the view plunges over the farming plain, Eristos bay and the sea as far as the Turkish coast. Allow an hour there and back.
Because it is the first Mediterranean island to cover its electricity needs with wind and solar, and the first in Greece to aim for zero waste. Visitors notice it in the recycling points, the municipal electric vehicles and the absence of plastic in the shops.
Yes, the whole island is a nature reserve and shelters dozens of breeding species, including Bonelli's eagle, which walkers sometimes spot above the ridges.
Eristos, a broad band of grey sand fringed with tamarisks, often ranked among the finest in the Dodecanese. It stays nearly deserted outside high season, with no sound but wind in the branches.
Yes, marked paths link monasteries, chapels and coves. The one to Agios Panteleimonas monastery, tucked into a green gorge facing the sea, offers the island's finest walk for anyone with a good two hours.
The euro and Greek. English gets by in the taverns of Livadia, but the island appears on no mass-market circuit: bring cash, especially for taxis and the grocery.
