Destination Overview
Hydra
Hydra is the only place in Greece — and one of the very few places in the world — where the 20th century's defining invention, the internal combustion engine, was simply refused entry. There are no cars here, no motorbikes, no scooters. Transport is by donkey, mule, water taxi, or on foot. The ban has been in place since the 1950s and has produced something remarkable: an island whose stone port looks almost exactly as it did when the ships of Hydra's merchant fleet dominated Mediterranean trade in the 18th century. That visual continuity is Hydra's most immediate gift to the visitor. The harbour — grey stone mansions ascending the hillside, donkeys picking their way along the quay, wooden caïques bobbing in the water — is architecturally preserved in a way that has nothing to do with tourism and everything to do with a community that made a deliberate choice about what kind of place it wanted to be. The result attracted artists. The artists attracted writers. The writers attracted Leonard Cohen, who bought a house here in 1960 for $1,500, wrote some of the finest songs of the 20th century on its terrace, and returned for decades. The creative current he embodied still runs through the island today.