Kos is the flat one. Among Greek islands that is close to unique, and it is the reason the town has a proper cycle network rather than a painted line, and the reason most visitors here get around on two wheels instead of a scooter. What follows is the island as it works, not as the brochure has it.
The town, where three civilisations share a car park
Kos Town has an unusual density of ruins for a place its size, largely because the 1933 earthquake flattened it and the Italian administration excavated while rebuilding. The result is a centre where a Roman agora, a Hellenistic gymnasium and a Crusader castle sit within a few hundred metres of each other, and none of them is fenced off from daily life.
The Castle of the Knights guards the harbour entrance and is reached across a bridge from Platanou Square. Under the plane tree in that square, according to a story nobody can verify and everybody repeats, Hippocrates taught. The tree is old. It is not 2,400 years old.
The Asklepieion
Four kilometres southwest of town, and the reason Kos matters historically. It was a healing sanctuary built on three terraces into a hillside, active from the 4th century BC, and the view from the top terrace crosses the strait to Bodrum on the Turkish coast, which is close enough to make out buildings on a clear day.
Cycle there. It is a gentle 20 minutes on a dedicated path, and arriving by bike at an ancient hospital feels appropriate in a way that arriving by coach does not.
Zia, and the honest warning
Zia is the mountain village every coach visits for sunset, and by six in the evening its single street holds several hundred people all photographing the same thing. The view is genuinely excellent. The experience is a queue.
Go at 11am instead, when the tavernas are empty and the walk up to Mount Dikeos starts from the top of the village. Or skip it and go to Asfendiou, three kilometres away, which is what Zia looked like before the coaches.
The coasts
The north coast around Tigaki and Marmari is shallow, sandy and windy, which makes it good for families and better for kitesurfers. The southwest, Paradise and Agios Stefanos, is where the water is clearest and where the small basilica ruins sit right on the sand. The far southwest at Kefalos is the quiet end.
Rent something with gears if you are heading beyond the town network, because the island is flat only in the middle and the road up to Kefalos is not.
Getting on and off
- Ferries run to Rhodes, Kalymnos, Nisyros and Patmos, most of them from Mastichari or the main port.
- Bodrum in Turkey is a 20 minute crossing and a genuine day trip.
- The airport is at Antimachia, in the middle of the island, 25km from the town.
- Athens is under an hour by air, and the ferry is an overnight.
Where we work
Athens and Mykonos only. There is nothing arranged on Kos, no contact on the island, and no version of this that changes on request. This page is a travel guide and stops there. For the capital, see Athens.
