Mykonos: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Mykonos town looks like a postcard and was designed as a defence. The lanes are deliberately narrow, curved and dead-ended, the houses face inward, and there is no straight line anywhere — because for three hundred years this coast was raided by pirates, and a maze buys the time to hide. The whitewash is lime, which was compulsory under the colonels in the 1960s and had been the habit for centuries before because lime is a disinfectant. Two hours, and a map will not help you.
A short history of Mykonos
In the ancient world Mykonos was a small, dry island in the shadow of neighbouring Delos, the centre of the cult of Apollo. From 1207 it was ruled by the Venetians and from 1537 by the Ottomans, and many of its residents were sailors and merchants. In the Greek War of Independence, in 1821, Manto Mavrogenous of the island led the local struggle against the Ottomans. The windmills on the hill were built mostly in the 16th century to grind wheat. From the mid-20th century artists and tourists began to arrive, and in the 1950s and 1960s it became one of the best-known destinations in the Mediterranean.
The ten best sights in Mykonos
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1Chora
The town; the lanes were built as a maze on purpose and a map will not help
2Matogianni StreetThe main shopping lane, open late, and the prices are the highest in Greece
3Little VeniceCaptains’ houses built out over the water, and the bars behind them face the sunset
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4Kato Mili windmills
Free, 16th century, and they ground the grain that fed passing ships
5Panagia ParaportianiFree from outside, five churches merged into one building, and entry is rare
6Archaeological Museum5 euro, closed Tuesday, and most of what is in it came from Rheneia
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7Folklore Museum
In a captain’s house by the Paraportiani, and the opening hours are short
8Aegean Maritime MuseumA small private museum of Greek merchant shipping, and the garden has a lighthouse lens
9Delos20 euro site entry plus about 25 for the return boat, and the last boat back is fixed
10RheneiaThe island beside Delos, uninhabited, and only boat trips stop there
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Mykonos →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Mykonos:
Free walking tours in Mykonos
The maze that was built to confuse
Mykonos town looks like a postcard and was designed as a defence. The lanes are deliberately narrow, curved and dead-ended, the houses face inward, and there is no straight line anywhere — because for three hundred years this coast was raided by pirates, and a maze buys the time to hide. The whitewash is lime, which was compulsory under the colonels in the 1960s and had been the habit for centuries before because lime is a disinfectant. Two hours, and a map will not help you.
- Old Port · Mykonos was poor and rocky and grew almost nothing, so its people went to sea — and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that meant trade and, openly, piracy. The island supplied ships and crews to whoever was fighting, and the harbour was the whole economy. The Delos boats still leave from this quay.
- Panagia Paraportiani · Not one church but five, built against each other between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and then whitewashed into a single lumpy mass — four at ground level and a fifth sitting on top of them. The name means "beside the side gate", because it stood next to the entrance of the medieval castle that is otherwise gone.
- Little Venice · The houses with balconies hanging straight over the water were built in the eighteenth century by sea captains and, by most local accounts, by smugglers — a door at water level let cargo come in from a boat without passing the customs house. The sea now breaks against the ground floors in winter and several have been rebuilt.
- Kato Mili windmills · Sixteen windmills once stood on this ridge and seven remain. They were not for the island’s own bread — Mykonos barely grew grain. Ships stopping on the route between Venice and the eastern Mediterranean needed ship’s biscuit, which keeps for months, and the island milled and baked it for them. The mills faced north because the meltem blows from there all summer.
- Matogianni Street · The main lane, and it is paved in the local way: irregular stones with the gaps painted white, repainted by hand every spring by the shopkeepers themselves. It is a municipal requirement, not decoration — and it is the clearest reason the town still looks the way it did in photographs from the fifties.
- Archaeological Museum · Built in 1902 for one specific purpose: to hold what was dug out of the purification pit on Rheneia. In 426 BC Athens ordered every grave on Delos emptied and the remains moved to the next island, so that no one would be born or die on sacred ground. The museum exists because of that single act. Five euro, closed Tuesday.
Delos — the island nobody may sleep on
Half an hour by boat is an uninhabited island that was once the richest religious and banking centre in the Aegean, with perhaps thirty thousand people living on two square kilometres. It is the mythological birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and for that reason Athens banned both birth and death on it — the dying and the pregnant were ferried off. Nobody has lived there since antiquity, and nobody may stay overnight today. Twenty euro for the site plus about twenty-five for the boat, and the last boat back is fixed.
- Delos · At its height in the second century BC this was a free port where the slave trade of the eastern Mediterranean was conducted — ancient sources claim ten thousand people could be sold here in a day, which is probably exaggerated but says what the place was. Rome made it duty-free in 166 BC and the population multiplied within a generation.
- Rheneia · The island next to Delos, and it is uninhabited for a reason: in 426 BC the Athenians dug up every grave on Delos and reburied the contents here in a single pit, then forbade burial on Delos forever. The pit was excavated in 1898 and almost everything in the Mykonos museum came out of it.
- Agios Ioannis · The bay that faces Delos directly across the strait, which is why it has the only sunset on Mykonos with an island in the frame rather than empty sea. It is also where Shirley Valentine was filmed in 1989, a fact the tavernas here have never let go of.
- Ano Mera · The only other village on the island, eight kilometres inland, and it exists because it cannot be seen from the sea — the same pirate logic that shaped the town. There is one square, four tavernas and a monastery, and prices are roughly half what they are in Chora.
- Panagia Tourliani · Founded in 1542 and rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and the carved wooden iconostasis inside was made in Florence in 1775 and shipped here — which tells you how much money the island’s shipowners had and where they spent it. The marble bell tower was carved in Tinos, the island that supplied marble workers to all of Greece.
- Armenistis Lighthouse · Built in 1891 after a specific disaster: the steamship Volta sank in the strait in 1887 with eleven dead, and the Greek government concluded that the channel between Mykonos and Tinos could not be navigated at night. The original lens is in the maritime museum in town.
The beaches, and which is which
The south coast is sheltered from the meltem and has all the organised beaches; the north coast takes the wind straight on and is nearly empty. That single fact explains the whole map: the party beaches, the expensive beach clubs and the boat service are all in the south, and anyone who wants a beach to themselves drives north. A day with the bus, the beach boats, or a quad.
- Platis Gialos · Not the best beach but the most useful one: the small boats that serve the whole south coast leave from this jetty, and in summer they are faster than the road — the beaches east of here are reached by rough tracks or not at all. The service stops when the season does, usually in October.
- Paradise Beach · The party started here in the 1960s, and not as a business: this was a campsite where hippies and, in the dictatorship years, Greeks avoiding the authorities slept on the sand. The bars grew out of that. The music now begins in the early afternoon, which is the inverse of everywhere else in Greece.
- Psarou · The small bay that set the island’s price level. A beach club opened here in 1990 and the sunbed price has risen every season since; it is now routinely more than a hotel room elsewhere on the island. Greek law says the first metres of every beach are public, and on Psarou that strip is the only free sand.
- Agios Sostis · No sunbeds, no bar on the sand, no road down to it — and that is a planning decision rather than neglect, because the chapel and the land behind it are protected. The taverna above it has no electricity and no telephone, cooks on charcoal, takes no bookings and only cash.
- Ftelia · The kitesurfing bay, and behind the sand is a Neolithic settlement excavated in the 1990s — people lived on this bay five thousand years before the temples on Delos were built. The wind that makes it unswimmable is exactly what makes it the best sailing water on the island.
- Fokos · A dirt road, one taverna, no electricity grid and no sunbeds at all, on the north coast where the wind blows. The owner has refused to expand it for thirty years and it closes when the weather turns. It is the clearest demonstration that the two halves of this island barely know each other.
Getting to Mykonos and getting around
- Mykonos Airport · 4 kilometres from town, and the bus into Fabrika runs through the season
- New Port Tourlos · Ferries from Athens and the other islands dock here, 2 kilometres north
- Old Port · The Delos boats leave from here; the crossing is about 30 minutes
- Fabrika · The southern bus station, for the beaches, and timetables thin out after October
Cheap eats in Mykonos
Mykonos grew almost nothing, so its own food is what keeps without refrigeration: kopanisti, a soft cheese deliberately left to ripen until it is sharp and peppery, which has a protected name and is made nowhere else; louza, pork loin cured in sea air; and ship’s biscuit, the twice-baked rusk the windmills existed for. Everything else on the island was imported, and the prices show it. The real divide here is not quality but geography — the same plate costs three times more on the sand than it does in Ano Mera.
- Kiki’s Tavern · About 25 euro, cash only, no bookings, and lunch only
- Fokos Taverna · About 30 euro, a dirt road in, and it closes in bad weather
- Ano Mera square · 12 to 20 euro, 8 kilometres from town, and the bus runs there
- Bakalo · About 30 euro, Greek rather than international cooking, and open in winter too
- Vegera · From breakfast to late on the harbour front, and it is a local institution
- Agia Anna · A fish taverna on a tiny bay beside Paraga, and the boat lands at the door
- Nammos · Day beds from several hundred euro, and booked weeks ahead
- Enoplon Dynameon · The restaurant street behind Matogianni, quieter, and prices are a step lower
Museums in Mykonos
There are four small museums in town and one enormous archaeological site half an hour away, and they are the same story told twice: Delos was the sacred and commercial centre of the Aegean, Mykonos was the poor rocky island beside it that supplied the boats. Everything in the archaeological museum came out of the ground on Rheneia, because of a single Athenian decree in 426 BC.
- Delos · 20 euro plus about 25 for the boat, no shade at all, and the return boat is fixed
- Archaeological Museum · 5 euro, closed Tuesday, and an hour is enough
- Folklore Museum · In an 18th-century captain’s house beside the Paraportiani, and the hours are short
- Aegean Maritime Museum · Small, in the Tria Pigadia quarter, and 40 minutes covers it
- Panagia Paraportiani · Free from outside, five churches merged into one, and it is rarely open
- Panagia Tourliani · Free, in Ano Mera, and the carved screen inside was made in Florence in 1775
- Rheneia · Uninhabited, reached only on a boat trip, and the purification pit is on it
- Kato Mili windmills · Free, seven of the original sixteen, and one is open as a small museum
Nature and day trips near Mykonos
The meltem decides everything on this island. It is a dry north wind that blows most days from June to September, sometimes for a week at a time, and it is why the south coast has every organised beach and the north coast has almost nothing. It also stops the ferries: when it reaches force seven the boats to Delos do not sail, and that is not rare.
- Agios Sostis · Free, a walk down from the road, and bring everything with you
- Ftelia · The kitesurf bay, and a Neolithic settlement was excavated behind the sand
- Panormos · A north-coast bay with two beach clubs and nothing else, and it takes the wind
- Lia · The far south-east corner, 9 kilometres out, and the clearest water on the island
- Kalafatis · 8 kilometres out, boards from about 30 euro an hour, and lessons are available
- Houlakia · Black pebbles rather than sand, north of town, and it is usually empty
- Merchia · Reached on a rough track, one taverna, and a proper car is needed
- Marathi · Inland, one taverna, and almost nobody goes
Things to do in Mykonos with kids
- Ornos · A sheltered bay, shallow water, and the bus from town runs all day
- Agios Stefanos · The closest beach to town, 4 kilometres, and calm most days
- Kalo Livadi · A wide east-coast bay with room to run, and the tavernas are good
- Beach boats · From Platis Gialos along the south coast, a few euro, and they stop in October
- Windmills · Free, a five-minute walk up from Little Venice, and one is open inside
- Archaeological Museum · 5 euro, small, and the Trojan horse jar is the one thing to find
- Delos · 20 euro plus the boat, no shade and no shop, and three hours on your feet
- Ano Mera · One square, four tavernas, and children can run in it safely
Nightlife in Mykonos
Mykonos has had a night life since the 1960s and it is the oldest in Greece, with a specific history: the island became a refuge for people who could not be themselves elsewhere, and it has stayed one. The schedule is inverted — the beach clubs run from lunch to sunset, the town bars from ten, and the clubs from two. Prices are the highest in the country and there is no pretending otherwise.
- Little Venice · Cocktails from about 18 euro, and the sunset seats go an hour before
- Scandinavian Bar · Drinks from about 10 euro, opens at ten, and it fills after midnight
- Paradise Beach · The party starts in the afternoon and runs to sunset, and entry is often ticketed
- Super Paradise · The other party beach, reached by boat or a very steep road, and it runs later
- Scorpios · On Paraga, from lunch into the night, ticketed, and booked well ahead
- Principote · On Panormos in the north, quieter than the south clubs, and open all day
- Tagoo · The cliff hotels north of town, sunset bars, and a taxi is needed
- Matogianni at night · Free to walk, shops open till midnight, and no cars at all
Holy places in Mykonos
There are said to be between three and eight hundred churches on Mykonos for about ten thousand residents, and the number is uncertain because most of them are private — a family built one as a vow, keeps the key, and opens it once a year on the saint’s day. That is why so many are locked and why they stand in the middle of fields and on beaches.
- Panagia Paraportiani · Free from outside, beside the old castle gate, and best at sunset
- Panagia Tourliani · Free, in Ano Mera, and shoulders and knees covered
- Agios Nikolaos · Free, the small church on the old harbour, and it is the fishermen’s saint
- Delos sanctuary · Included in the 20-euro site ticket, and the terrace of lions is the image
- Delos synagogue · On the far side of the site, a 20-minute walk, and few visitors reach it
- Agios Sostis chapel · Free, the chapel above the beach, and it is why the bay was never developed
- Paraportiani quarter · Free, the oldest lanes in town, and the castle that stood here is gone
- Tria Pigadia · Free, in the town centre, and the wells are sealed
Frequently asked questions about Mykonos
What is there to see in Mykonos?
The top sights in Mykonos are Chora, Matogianni Street and Little Venice. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Mykonos?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Mykonos without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Mykonos?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Mykonos, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The maze that was built to confuse.
How do you get to Mykonos and get around?
The main ways are Mykonos Airport, New Port Tourlos and Old Port. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Mykonos, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Mykonos that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Mykonos for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.