Astypalaia

Shaped like a butterfly and stranded far out in the Aegean, Astypalaia is the Greek island that the crowds mostly forgot. Officially it belongs to the Dodecanese, but it looks pure Cycladic: a cascade of sugar-cube houses climbing to a Venetian castle, a famous row of stone windmills at the top of Chora, blue domes against a bleached sky. Below sits the little port of Pera Gialos; a short drive away, the green valley of Livadi runs down to an easy beach. The island's pleasures are small and slow — a plate of grilled fish by the water, a sunset from the castle walls, a bumpy track out to a wild cove like Kaminakia where you may have the turquoise water to yourself. It is even reinventing itself quietly as one of Europe's first electric-mobility islands. Getting here takes effort — a flight or a long ferry from Athens — and that is exactly the point.

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