Ikaria tours are small-group trips across Ikaria, a mountainous island of the eastern Aegean Sea. The island lies south-west of Samos. This page covers Raches and Vrakades, the seaside village of Karavostamo and the Icarus Festival. It ends with Therma, Faros, Agios Kirykos and the record of an old bishop. Related pages cover Greek food and the best Greek islands. More trips appear on the Greece tours page.
Bookings made through the GetYourGuide widgets on this page earn Classical Greece Tours a commission, at no extra cost to the traveller.
What are Ikaria tours?
Ikaria tours centre on an island that forms its own municipality within the Ikaria regional unit. That unit belongs to the North Aegean region. A municipality is an area governed by a single local council. Samos lies east of Ikaria, while Fournoi lies to the south-east.
To the north lie Chios and the Anatolian mainland, the Asian part of modern Turkey. The Cyclades, a large group of islands, lie to the west. Ikaria tours take place on land that swings between green slopes and bare, steep rock. Olive trees are scarce across the north of Ikaria.
The climate brings hot summers and wet winters, and snow now and then settles on the peaks. Finds from central and eastern Ikaria point to early settlers called Pelasgians. They lived in the Neolithic, the late Stone Age. Ancient Greeks used that name for every people who lived in the region before them.
In Byzantine times the islanders avoided mixing with outsiders. Byzantine labels the eastern half of Rome in its later, Greek-speaking centuries. The islanders saw themselves as people of noble, purple blood, since purple marked nobility in that era. Ikaria tours run on an island that left Ottoman rule in 1827. It stayed outside the new Greek state.
- Visitors: In the 1970s hippie visitors arrived, and the locals called them grouvaloi.
- Abroad: Ikarian communities are found in Canada, Egypt, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.
- Kin: Ikarians are close relatives of islanders from Samos, Chios, Fournoi and Patmos.
Ikaria tours belong to an island where summer tourism pays for main roads and hospitals. The same income backs hybrid energy projects. These join dams that make power from water with wind turbines. Hybrid means mixing two kinds of source.
Which villages does Raches give Ikaria tours?
Ikaria tours share the island with Raches, a village and former municipality that now forms a municipal unit. That unit counted 2,282 people at the 2021 census, a national headcount. Such a unit is one part of a larger municipality.
Raches spans 101.768 square kilometres of land. Among the three units of Ikaria, no other covers so much ground. It also has the smallest population, so it is the least densely settled. Density means the number of people living on each square kilometre. Ikaria tours unfold on an island split into these three units.
Christos Rachon is the seat of the Raches region and the main settlement in the interior. Akamatra, Vrakades and Kampos come next among the inland settlements. The Raches community holds Vrakades, Armenistis, Kares, Agios Dimitrios and Christos. A community is a local district below the municipal unit.
Vrakades keeps old stone houses and notable villas of sea captains. Its folklore museum keeps papers and keepsakes of the Free State of Ikaria. Folklore covers the old customs, tales and crafts of a people. The Free State was the island’s own short-lived country. Ikaria tours belong to an island with records in that museum over 500 years old.
- Lanari: This cutter in the Vrakades museum once worked wool and goat hair for clothing.
- Relics: Church relics from Profit Elias in Vrakades form part of the museum collection.
- South: Karkinagri is one of the settlements on the south side of Ikaria.
On Ikaria tours, the Raches unit also holds the Karkinagri community. Its villages are Karkinagri, Amalo, Kalamos, Lagkada, Pezi and Trapalo. The third community, Agios Polykarpos, includes Agios Panteleimonas, Gialiskari, Lapsachades and Mandria. It also takes in Kastanies, also called Tragostasi.
How does Karavostamo fit into Ikaria tours?
Ikaria tours belong to an island whose northern side holds Karavostamo, a seaside village. It has two parts, an upper village and a lower one. Karavostamo lies east of the Evdilos municipal unit and had 503 inhabitants in 2021. Inhabitants are the people living there.
Small houses climb the slope in rows, in the shape of an amphitheatre. That word names an open-air theatre whose seats rise in curved steps. The village has two churches, a nursery, a primary school and a modern oil press. Ikaria tours run on an island where Karavostamo also has streams, old watermills and beaches.
Halika Spring sits a short step from the main road. In the past the spring was the central meeting place of the villagers. They filled pitchers, washed clothes and rested there. A pitcher is a jug for water. Ikaria tours unfold on an island where villagers once talked over local matters at this spring.
In the upper village, terraces surround the farmhouses, and only part of them is still farmed. Terraces are level strips of ground built into a slope for farming. Villagers dry figs in the sun and tie onions into strings for the winter. Nuts and almonds are shelled and dried there as well.
- Kamini: A kamini, a site for making charcoal, still stands here, one of the last on Ikaria.
- Tradition: Charcoal making on Ikaria goes back to the years before the Second World War.
- Hardship: During the Second World War, over 100 people in Karavostamo are said to have starved.
Ikaria tours share an island where Karavostamo counts among the key seaside villages of the north coast. Armenistis is the other village named alongside it. Seaside means set right beside the sea. A watermill is a mill driven by running water.
What does the Icarus Festival add to Ikaria tours?
Ikaria tours share the home island of the Icarus Festival for Dialogue between Cultures. This nonprofit music festival is international and began on Ikaria in the summer of 2006. Nonprofit means that any income goes back into the event, not to owners.
Each year, three towns organise the festival: Agios Kirykos, Evdilos and Raches. Ikaria tours belong to the island where all three stand. Its days also see cultural books and albums brought before the public. Well-known artists take the stage, and they mostly play their own original work.
The name recalls Icarus, a figure of Greek myth. He dared to fly wherever he wished and lost his life for it. Ikaria tours share an island whose festival hosts artists with music drawn from more than one culture. Vangelis Fampas and Klaudia Delmer led the first edition as artistic directors.
The 2008 festival was devoted to the violin, an instrument popular on Ikaria. From then on, the programme grew wider. It took in theatre, cinema, painting, photography, dance, dance lessons and classical mythology. Classical mythology means the old Greek and Roman myths. The Icarus Film Festival, backed by the cinema club of Agios Kirykos, brought film in.
- 2009: An International Music, Drama and Film Festival ran alongside the Icarus Festival that summer.
- Programme: Latin American culture shared that programme with Socrates’s Apology, a drama from ancient Greece.
- Reputation: Travel magazines list the festival as a destination for culture in Greece.
On Ikaria tours, the festival has welcomed Etnika, a band from Malta. L’ Ham de Foc from Spain has played there too. So has Motion Trio from Poland. Trio is the word for a set of three players. A band is any group making music together.
What do travellers ask about Ikaria tours, and what are the answers?
Ikaria tours happen on the island whose village of Faros has the Cave of Dionysos nearby. A hilltop fortress built by Italy in the Second World War stands close by. In Greek myth, Dionysos ruled over wine and festivity.
Before Ikaria tours, how radioactive are the springs of Therma?
The water at Therma has a radioactivity range from 65 to 557 Mache units. The Mache is a unit of radioactivity in a given volume. It is named after Heinrich Mache, an Austrian physicist. From the harbour of Agios Kirykos, Therma lies 3 km to the east. It sits 12 km from the airport of Ikaria.
On Ikaria tours, what lies around the village of Faros?
Faros stands at the south-east end of Ikaria, on a small plain full of vineyards. Its beach runs for 3.2 km and is said to be the longest on the island. Near the village stands Drakano Fortress, once the third capital of ancient Ikaria. Iero Beach lies close to the fortress.
Near Ikaria tours, which landmarks stand in Agios Kirykos?
The town of Agios Kirykos itself counted 2,958 people at the 2021 census. Its points of interest include the statue of Skepsi, a figure of a thinking woman. The list of sights also names the Lefkada Annunciation monastery from the medieval era. Medieval ties the monastery to the Middle Ages, the centuries after antiquity.
Before Ikaria tours, what did Bishop Georgirenes write about the island?
Joseph Georgirenes, bishop of Samos, recorded three small towns on Ikaria: Cachoria, Steli and Musara. None of them had more than 100 houses. In the villages, every home had its own garden plot and an orchard inside walls. He praised the inshore waters for the best cockles, a shellfish, in the island group.
Featured photo: JoraK, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (File:Evdilos 2.jpg).