Aegina

Aegina is the island that proves you do not need a long-haul flight, an overnight ferry, or a week-long itinerary to find something genuinely extraordinary in Greece. It is 40 minutes from Piraeus on a hydrofoil, and it contains one of the best-preserved Doric temples in the entire Greek world, a harbour town with more architectural character than most island capitals ten times its size, a fishing village that still functions as a fishing village, and the finest pistachios produced anywhere in the country. It is also, by a comfortable margin, the most visited island in the Saronic Gulf — which says something about its accessibility from Athens and everything about what it delivers once you arrive. Weekends bring Athenian families, couples, and day-trippers who fill the harbour front cafés and line the quay for the afternoon ferry back. But Aegina is large enough and characterful enough to absorb that traffic without losing its identity. Geographically, Aegina sits at the northern mouth of the Saronic Gulf, 27 km southwest of Piraeus. Its landscape is pine-covered hills rising to the summit of Mount Oros (531 m), with the agricultural plain around Aegina Town producing the pistachio trees that have defined the island's economy and identity for generations.