A Greek revival is underway along the Athenian Riviera
A nearly 40-mile stretch of sun-kissed coastline stretching from the port of Piraeus to the southernmost point of Attica at Cape Sounion, the Athenian Riviera has been a popular destination for decades. Celebrities, socialites, and locals seeking a mix of serenity and solitude would come to unwind, basking in the crystalline waters and palm-fringed beaches. Stories of a bikini-clad Brigitte Bardot seen dancing barefoot on a local beach in Glyfada, and the late-night serenades of Frank Sinatra from the terrace of his Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel bungalow only added to the coastline's illustrious appeal.
As the region's star power continued to rise throughout the 1970s and 80s, the area eventually earned the nickname the 'Côte d'Azur of Greece.' The Temple of Poseidon sits at the southernmost tip of the Athenian Riviera, and was built to honor the god of the sea. Photograph by Stefano Politi Markovina, Alamy The Athenian Riviera has been drawing luxury-minded travelers for decades. Photograph by Ioannis Mantas, Alamy
'It's long been a destination where authenticity meets sophistication,' says Chrysanthos Panas, an Athens-based author and co-owner of Island Club & Restaurant. 'It's this effortless blend of ancient history and contemporary Mediterranean lifestyle; you can start your day exploring the Acropolis and by afternoon, be swimming in crystal-clear waters or enjoying lunch by the sea.'
Development across the region started to slow in the late 1990s and 2000s, and as travelers skipped Athens altogether in favor of neighboring islands like Santorini and Mykonos, the region lost its sheen.
However, the Athenian Riviera has had a revival in recent years. 'Over the years, I've witnessed a truly remarkable transformation,' says Panas. 'Today, the Athens Riviera is a vibrant ecosystem—home to fine dining, five-star hotels, exclusive clubs, and thoughtfully curated cultural experience... But beyond the infrastructure, what truly matters is preserving the soul of the place: The light, the sea, and the timeless warmth of Greek hospitality.'
(10 historic Greek wonders away from the islands) What to see and do Lake Vouliagmeni's mineral-rich waters are warmed by underground thermal springs. Photograph by Christos the Greek, Alamy
The Temple of Poseidon: Dating back to the fifth century B.C.E., the Temple of Poseidon sits at the southernmost tip of the Athenian Riviera. Built to honor the god of the sea, a visit to the temple ruins is well worth the 45-minute scenic drive along the winding coastal road to get there.
Lake Vouliagmeni: Open year-round, this gorgeous lake—its mineral-rich waters are warmed by underground thermal springs—is encircled by towering limestone cliffs. The lake requires a ticket to enter, so make sure you book your spot in advance if you can, otherwise plan on arriving early, especially in the summer. Seats in the main area are first come, first served, and there are also cabanas, and a restaurant and bar.
Astir Beach: Astir Beach is known for its crystal clear water and high-end amenities. There are plenty of striped chairs and cozy cabanas available for a fee. There's also a high-end marina with multi-million-dollar yachts.
Vouliagmeni Beach: One of the region's most popular local beaches, Vouliagmeni Beach is where the locals and in-the-know visitors go. Lounge chairs and straw-covered beach chairs line the beachfront, and there are plenty of beach bars and local eateries to grab a light bite, as well.
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center: A cultural and architectural treasure, Renzo Piano's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center is a mecca of environmental and sustainable stewardship. You can spend a day roaming the beautiful grounds, attend a show, and explore the top-floor lighthouse that boasts some of the best views in town.
Island exploration: The Saronic Gulf islands are an easy day trip by ferry from Athens. The most cost-effective way to get there is via a fast ferry from Piraeus where you can pop over to nearby Aegina or the charming island of Poros for lunch and still make it back to Athens in time for dinner. You can also opt to take a day cruise, which makes stops at three local islands and includes lunch. Ferry schedules tend to change daily depending on the weather and the season, so be sure to check the ferry schedule and plan accordingly. Where to eat and drink
Taverna 37: There's nothing more romantic than dining seaside by candlelight, which is exactly what you'll find at Taverna 37. This charming restaurant serves some of the best mezze's and locally sourced seafood in town.
Barbarossa: One of the buzziest restaurants to see and be seen on the Athenian Riviera right now, Barbarossa has a Mediterranean menu that shines a spotlight on seafood. The lobster and crab linguini and the banoffee pie are not to be missed.
Island Club & Restaurant: Beloved by celebrities, socialites, and influencers, Island Club & Restaurant has been the go-to dinner and party spot for more than 30 years. And it hasn't lost its touch. Weekends are a great time to dance to world-known DJ's or enjoy dinner overlooking the craggy coastline.
Makris Athens: Michelin-starred Makris Athens is housed in a historical building at the foot of the Parthenon, and is one meal you don't want to miss in Athens. With ingredients sourced from chef Petros Dimas' farm in Corinth, the menu draws heavily on traditional Greek dishes served with an elevated twist inspired by the region. Be sure to book a table on the outside patio for incredible views overlooking the ancient Acropolis.
Zaxos Grill: You can't go to Greece and not eat your body weight in spanakopita and souvlaki, and in the heart of Vouliagmeni, Zaxos Grill is open for lunch and dinner and is a requisite spot to do just that. It's no frills, and no reservations, but the portions are generous, the fries are perfectly salted, and the vibes are as laid back and authentic as it gets.
Papaioannou Restaurant: As fine dining seafood restaurants go, you can't do much better than Papaioannou Restaurant. Pairing some of the Riviera's best views with local seafood and a curated wine list prominently featuring crisp Greek wines, book your reservation at sunset for a memorable meal you won't soon forget.
(How to spend the perfect day in Athens, from historic walks to modern art) Where to shop
Ioannou Metaxa Street: The main thoroughfare in the leafy residential neighborhood of Glyfada, Ioannou Metaxa Street is lined with Greek designer boutiques and international brands, charming cafes, and restaurants. Don't be afraid to veer off and explore the side streets where plenty of hidden gems abound.
The Naxos Apothecary: A short stroll from Syntagma Square in Athens, The Naxos Apothecary is an experiential boutique and a great place to pick up locally made homeopathic bath and body products and fragrances. The products have made their way into local hotels, including 91 Athens Riviera, but it's worth a visit to the beautifully curated, multi-level store. Where to stay
Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel Athens: Nestled along a pine-covered peninsula overlooking the glittering Aegean Sea, Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel Athens has served as the crown jewel of the Athenian Riviera ever since it first opened at the Astir Palace in 1961. Highlights among the eight restaurants and bars include Italian trattoria-style restaurant at Mercato, Michelin-starred Pelagos, and traditional Greek seafood and mezzes at Taverna 37.
91 Athens Riviera: If you're seeking luxury meets summer camp, 91 Athens Riviera opened 28 luxury tents called 'luxents' in 2024. The hotel's on-site restaurant, Barbarossa, is extremely popular, as well. Michelle Gross is a Beaufort, SC-based travel journalist and photographer covering the cross-section of sustainable and ethical travel. Passionate about telling stories about interesting people and places around the world, follow her adventures on Instagram.
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USA Today
41 minutes ago
- USA Today
Metal heads, TikTokers, shiny new airports: Greenland, but not as you think you know it
Special Report: Greenland's relatively isolated indigenous Inuit culture finds itself increasingly exposed to the world just as President Donald Trump pushes to take over the territory. NUUK, Greenland − Musicians Pani and Sebastian Enequist sport once-suppressed Inuit face tattoos, hunt seals for food in remote fjords and honor nature "like a God." But they found their calling − and each other − while they were obsessing over the American heavy metal band Slipknot. For thousands of years, Greenland's Inuit people survived the world's harshest conditions by living off whales, seals, polar bears, fish and caribou. Now, gleaming new airports are opening up. TikTok stars are proliferating. A relatively isolated indigenous culture, long dominated by ruling Denmark, finds itself increasingly exposed to the world just as President Donald Trump pushes to take over the Arctic territory. Still, if music can tell ancient and modern stories alike, then the Sound of the Damned, the Enequists' Nuuk-based hardcore metal band, has a musical plotline that wends across time and place. The group's raspy, guttural-growl vocals, introspective lyrics and aggressive beats are old and young. Native and foreign-born. They illustrate how change is sweeping through the island's unique heritage, even as some things stay the same. 'Buy us!': Greenlanders shocked, intrigued, bewildered by Trump zeal for Arctic territory "We want to play metal. We also want to represent our culture," said Pani Enequist, 32, who writes Sound of the Damned's lyrics and recently began performing with them. Her husband Sebastian, 29, is the band's lead singer and guitarist. The group's new material incorporates an Inuit drum called a "qilaat," mask dancing and throat singing, where hums, gasps and grunts mimic the sounds of animals, streams and icebergs. The Enequists said that in 2016, they were among the first of a new generation of Greenlanders to get face tattoos, known in Greenlandic as Kakiuineq, as a way to reclaim and celebrate their Inuit ancestral roots, traditions and spirituality. They also view them as a way of rejecting the legacy of Denmark's 18th-century Christian missionaries, who labeled the practice as pagan and sought to have it banned. Their meanings are linked to Inuit cosmology and rites of passage. Trump wants to buy Greenland: Denmark's first move? Alter its royal coat of arms Greenland's music scene: small but mighty Greenland's music scene is small, with the number of musicians and bands working in Nuuk estimated in the low dozens, according to Christian Elsner, whose family owns Atlantic Music, a record label and music store in Greenland's capital that sells instruments and albums. Greenland has a Spotify-style streaming service called Tusass Music, linked to its postal service, only accessible to users in Greenland and Denmark. Atlantic Music also houses one of Greenland's few full-blown recording studios. It sits in the basement of a squat, gabled house framed by a veranda-style front porch. Across the street is Nuuk Center, an eight-story ultra-modern office tower, which would not look out of place in a European city. Greenland's not for sale: It is welcoming Americans with direct flights. On Trump's birthday Nuuk Center is Greenland's tallest building. It is also home to its first shopping mall, which opened in 2012. On its upper floors are offices for the Naalakkersuisut or Greenlandic government, which is trying to boost tourism and the local economy by rebuilding and expanding three new airports for direct international flights. The first direct U.S. flights to Greenland began on June 14 − Trump's birthday. This is something many Greenlanders feel ambivalent about. They want American tourists to visit. They don't want to become part of the United States, polls show. Sounds of the Arctic Laura Lennert Jensen works for Arctic Sounds, a Greenland-based music management company that represents and promotes local artists. Arctic Sounds also stages an annual music festival − the Arctic Sounds Festival − in Sisimiut, in central western Greenland, which showcases original music acts from Nordic countries. About 90% of Greenland's 57,000 people identify as Inuit. Jensen said Greenlanders first started making popular music that wasn't traditional Inuit music in the 1970s. In keeping with the times, it was influenced by popular British rock and roll acts of the day, such as Pink Floyd and Deep Purple. Over time, access to the internet improved. So did the advent of software that made it easier for musicians to write and record music without a professional studio. Greenland's music has diversified to include rap, reggae, electronica, country, pop and everything in between. 'One way or the other': Five ways Trump's Greenland saga could play out On a recent evening in Nuuk, Jensen took USA TODAY on a whistle-stop tour of a few of Nuuk's live music hotspots, where the acts included lounge singers, folk rock bands and jazz artists. All sang in Greenlandic to attentive local audiences. As did Kuuna, an up-and-coming pop singer who strode self-assuredly around the ring, belting out tunes in between rounds at a Thai boxing event like a fledgling Greenlandic version of Beyoncé. "Some of our musicians do not carry a single trace of Inuit music in what they create," Jensen said. "Others carry it as symbolism, to reflect history or to revitalize techniques that have been lost." Denmark's Greenland experiment Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953. For hundreds of years prior, it was under Danish authority. That era began with the arrival of a Danish-Norwegian Lutheran missionary priest named Hans Egede in 1721. In 1979, Greenland was granted home rule. Thirty years later, it became a self-governing entity. Today, Denmark retains control over Greenland's foreign affairs, defense and macro-economic policy. The Greenlandic government manages areas such as education, healthcare, natural resources and culture. During colonial rule, Denmark enforced assimilation policies for the Inuit population. It unofficially prohibited the Greenlandic language. In 1951, it removed 22 children from their families and put them in Danish homes, an experiment aimed at turning them into model "Little Danes." 'We want to be Greenlanders': Slow independence party wins vote, but pro-US party gains In the 1960s and 1970s, as many as 4,500 women and girls − half of the fertile women in Greenland, according to Danish authorities − were subjected to forced sterilization by government physicians, using painful intrauterine devices. Greenland was in the early stages of its modernization. This included a construction boom that attracted many Danish workers and led to a high birth rate among Inuit women. Denmark's city planners wanted to limit Greenland's population growth. The Danish government has issued formal apologies for these policies. But many Greenlanders remain shocked and bitter about these episodes, which helped fuel calls for independence from Denmark. Greenlanders also believe that deep-rooted biases remain and a broader pattern of ongoing systemic discrimination favors Danes in areas such as access to lucrative jobs and promotions, according to Ulrik Pram Gad, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen. "Many of us feel like there is discrimination in the workplace in Greenland when it comes to high-ranking positions," said Orla Joelsen, a prison official in Nuuk whose job falls under the authority of Denmark's justice department. Joelsen said he was speaking in a private capacity. Greenlanders are underrepresented in the upper echelons of the island's corporate world, according to Gad, the Denmark-based researcher. In his spare time, Joelsen runs a popular X account about Greenland that has been highly critical of Trump's interest in Greenland. "It's going to be a long four years," he said. Greenland's influencers Some Greenlanders appear more ready than others for Greenland's shifting cultural tectonic plates. "On my TikTok account, I talk a lot about what groceries I'm buying," said Malu Falck, 32, a singer and graphic designer in Nuuk whose short-form social videos about everyday life in Greenland have helped bring her a whole new following. Falck has almost 10,000 followers on TikTok. She is not yet making money off of TikTok, she said, though her image was displayed as part of an ad in the window of a Nuuk storefront. "It's new in Greenland, but people are getting used to it," Falck said of TikTok. She estimated that about 100 Greenlanders are "very active" on YouTube, TikTok and other social media. One of them is Qupanuk Olsen, a Greenlandic mining engineer and politician known for her vlogs about Greenland's culture, history and traditional Inuit life. Olsen's posts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube routinely reach half a million people. But it is in music where Greenland's overlapping identities are perhaps most directly observable. Varna Marianne Nielsen, 44, is a Greenlandic filmmaker, music producer and practitioner of traditional drum dancing and drum singing. The latter involves performing with a stick made of bone or wood that is rhythmically struck against a frame drum or qilaat to make an echoing beat. Distorted maps have misled you: Greenland isn't as big as you think. Nielsen descends from a long line of drum dancers, but grew up listening to American blues, jazz and rock music. "I have both of these traditions in me," she said. Nielsen described her music as "sweeping from the ice and the land." In 2014, she had a role in an episode of the TV series "True Detective," for which she co-produced multiple original scores. Nielsen said that, as a child, she was proud of her Greenlandic heritage but didn't necessarily understand how her identity had been shaped and influenced by Denmark. As an adult, Nielsen said, she has felt compelled to help revive the drum dancing and drum singing tradition that was neglected by earlier generations. Her work includes field recordings and electronically-composed beats. Nielsen was surprised to learn recently, while doing research in Denmark, that her grandfather's drum was exhibited in the National Museum in Copenhagen. She found this discovery upsetting because it illustrated how, even now, Greenland's culture is being expropriated by Denmark. "It is still difficult to access our treasures when they are in a different country and not home where they belong," she said, adding that she hoped Danish authorities would repatriate Greenland's drums. Like Pani Enequist from Sound of the Damned, Nielsen's fingers are encircled by tattoos. Their meaning connects to Sassuma Arnaa, or "Mother of the Sea," an Inuit creation myth about the goddess Sedna. Versions of the myth vary. But the story tells how Sedna came to rule over the Inuit underworld. In one version, Sassuma was a woman who was mistreated by her family and thrown into the sea by her father, when her fingers were severed and became seals, whales and other marine life for which the Arctic is known. Sound of the Damned is spending several weeks this summer touring Danish schools, where band members will talk to children about Greenland's Inuit culture. On stage, they wear "corpse paint"– a style of makeup that gives them a macabre look. Enequist said this has little to do with Greenland and everything to do with music from Metallica to Slipknot that shaped the band's sound and formed the backdrop to her courtship with her husband. "There is no contradiction in that," she said. Keeping it Greenlandic Elsner, whose family owns Atlantic Music, is also a musician. He plays in Nanook, perhaps Greenland's most successful band of the modern era. The group's name refers to Greenland's mythological polar bear, which is on the territory's coat of arms and symbolizes Greenland's wildness. Since the band formed in 2008, Nanook's brand of melancholic folk-pop has sold around 5,000 records in Greenland − meaning that about 1 in 10 Greenlanders, 1 in 4 or 5 households, could own one. Nanook refused an offer to sign with the Sony record label early on in the band's career because it wanted them to sing in English. Elsner said he and his brother, also a vocalist in Nanook, found the idea "too awkward and unnatural." They also worried it would be a kind of betrayal of their Greenlandic inheritance. Not many international music artists travel to Greenland, Elsner said. Distance and expense are factors. Also, there are no roads connecting Greenland's settlements. Nanook has toured Greenland by boat, plane, helicopter, dog sled and snowmobile. Never a tour bus. Elsner said that even though the American metal band Metallica has a Danish drummer in Lars Ulrich, the California-based group has never made the trip. But in the late 1990s, a British band called Blur did show up in Greenland. They played to about 1,000 people in a now-defunct Nuuk bowling alley. And Damon Albarn, Blur's lead singer, endeared himself to Greenlanders, Elsner said, because he did an interview that featured in a documentary saying it was hypocritical for Westerners to criticize Greenlanders for eating seals, whales and other Arctic marine life when there wasn't any major livestock industry in Greenland. "Seals," Albarn said, were "the cows of Greenland" and they had much better lives – and deaths − than Western industrial livestock, which are often raised in intense confinement in pens and cages. Elsner said Greenland is a paradox. "It's this crazy beautiful place where there is a dark side," he said, referring to high rates of alcoholism, suicide and incest in some communities. He said Greenland's good and bad, old and new, seeps into its music. Socially conscious rappers talk about colonization. Metal bands like Sound of the Damned sing about "how they want their culture back." Other musicians address the idea of independence from Denmark. And others still, like Elsner's own band, write songs about nature and "stuff that happens to us" and deliberately avoid writing political songs. And if they do, couch them in metaphors "so it doesn't affect some people the wrong way," he said. Greenland's music, Elsner said, is, like the place, staying true to its origins yet also evolving. There are signs, beyond music, of Greenland on the move. A reporter saw one Tesla hum and whir by in Nuuk. There's rumored to be a second one among Greenland's approximately 6,500 cars for an island that's about half the size of the Indian subcontinent and has fewer than 60 miles of road and just three traffic lights. A local boat captain who sails with tourists in Nuuk and elsewhere said that he'd seen only one polar bear in his entire life. It was in a zoo in Copenhagen.
Business Insider
3 hours ago
- Business Insider
A couple transformed a 20-year-old school bus into a mobile home and traveled the country's parks: 'It's not for the lazy'
Scott Heltz had always hoped to give up his day job one day, buy an RV, and explore the country. When the New Orleans-based electrician met his partner, Shaquita Riley, in 2019, he finally found someone to do it with. But Riley had a slightly different idea. She suggested buying an old school bus and converting it into a mobile home, or a "skoolie." Heltz, who loves building things, was intrigued. There was more room to rebuild and customize an old bus than an RV. Within six months of meeting, Heltz and Riley bought a 2004 school bus for about $3,000. "The biggest thing for me was traveling," Heltz, 55, told Business Insider. "I always wanted to travel." Heltz estimates the couple spent about $40,000 renovating the bus over the course of three years. They cut off the roof and raised it, installed new sheet metal, and tore out the old interior, replacing it with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, eating area, and lots of colorful art. "The day I put the toilet in the bus, my wife ran out and bought a mattress, and she never spent another night in the house," Heltz said. The couple left New Orleans in 2023 and haven't looked back. Since then, Heltz and Riley — and their two dogs and two cats — have traveled the American West, mostly working and camping in state and national parks. These days, they're living in their bus in southern Arizona and hoping to settle down. They're not alone. A growing number of Americans are giving up their brick-and-mortar homes and traveling the country in RVs and skoolies, working in exchange for a place to park and a modest hourly wage. Some are older people retiring on the cheap, others are families looking to expose their kids to the country, and still others are living in vehicles to avoid high rents or homelessness. Skoolie life isn't for everyone Heltz stressed that the skoolie life isn't as glamorous as some influencers and others make it out to be. There are mechanical issues to deal with, insurance can be expensive, and living in tight quarters and working menial jobs in parks can be tough. "There were times when I definitely questioned why I was cleaning toilets instead of doing something that I was made to do," he said. The lifestyle also came with a significant pay cut for Heltz. But the bus hasn't given them much trouble, and their expenses have been relatively low. "Bus life got real romanticized for a while," Heltz said. "It's not for the lazy. It's not for people that aren't self-sufficient." He added, "It's not just throwing a futon in a bus and driving around the country and seeing things. You've still got to live. You've still got to survive. You've still got to pay bills." Are you work-camping or finding creative ways to save on housing costs? Reach out to this reporter at erelman@ They're not planning on living in the bus forever. Last year, the couple, who aren't legally married but plan to wed this year, bought 20 acres of land in Douglas, Arizona, a small town on the border of Mexico, where they want to build a container home and live off the land. Riley wants to become a turkey farmer and raise a slew of other farm animals, while Heltz wants to build his own solar power station so they can live largely off the grid. They've cleared the area where they'd like to build the house, and they've built a driveway, but they're still working on getting a well on the property — a crucial feature in the southwestern desert. In the meantime, they're living in their bus in an RV park in Sierra Vista, Arizona, about 50 miles from their property. Heltz is working for an RV dealer, where he repairs vehicles. He's hoping he'll be able to start his own business repairing mobile homes. Riley recently completed her BA and is working towards becoming a therapist. "We'll see how it goes. It's kind of day by day," Heltz said. "But we do have a plan."
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Greece on high alert as heat and wind fuel fire outbreaks
A new fire broke out on Friday near the Greek capital, Athens, as the country was put on high alert for wildfires due to increased temperatures and strong winds. Thousands of tourists and locals were meanwhile forced to flee hotels and guesthouses in a resort on the popular island of Crete. Hot, dry weather -- not unusual for this time of year -- has heightened the risk of summer fires and scientists say human-driven climate change is making them more frequent and more intense. The latest fire broke out in the municipality of Koropi, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of Athens, fanned by strong gusts. It quickly spread through the area, which includes homes surrounded by dense vegetation and extends to the shores of the Aegean Sea, and residents were ordered by text message to evacuate. Fire service spokesman Vassilis Vathrakoyannis said some 800 people had left their homes, as the flames "quickly grew to dangerous proportions" because of the wind, with several outbreaks. Roads on the outskirts of Athens were closed to traffic. Public television channel ERT broadcast images of fire damage to houses, olive groves and undergrowth. By late afternoon, a fire department official told AFP that the situation appeared "improved" but added "there remain some scattered clusters". "Operations are ongoing, mainly to control small outbreaks," he told reporters. In all, 120 firefighters were deployed, with 30 engines, eight planes and the same number of helicopters, fire service spokesman Vathrakoyannis said. A coastguard vessel was patrolling nearby. Concerns remain for the coming days, particularly Saturday, when temperatures are due to rise to above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Greece had until now been generally spared the heatwave roasting parts of Europe, particularly Spain, Portugal and France over recent days. - High risk - Among the most threatened regions were Attica, in the Athens region, which is home to more than four million people, as well as the northern part of the second-largest Greek island Euboea. In the past 24 hours, 47 agricultural and forest fires have broken out, most of which have been contained. Firefighters earlier managed to bring under control a separate fire which had on Thursday threatened the port of Rafina, around 20 kilometres northeast of Koropi, after some 300 local people were evacuated from their homes. Fire crews remained on alert, as the Rafina wildfire was not far from Athens International Airport and winds still posed a threat. The blaze destroyed a several houses and vehicles, local mayor Dimitris Markou told ERT. It also disrupted ferries to and from tourist islands in the western Aegean, including Mykonos. On the island of Crete, around 230 firefighters, 48 fire engines and six helicopters remained at the scene near the resort town of Ierapetra, even though the blaze was receding. Some 3,000 visitors had been forced to leave their hotels and guest houses on Wednesday evening and 2,000 local residents were also evacuated, authorities said. "The fire is retreating," Vathrakoyannis told AFP. "There are still fears of flare-ups but there is no longer a major front," he added. Scattered hot spots still remained and firefighters were dealing with several smoke-filled areas from which flare-ups had restarted, the fire department told the ANA press agency. Weakening winds in the hard-to-reach area had improved the situation, firefighters said, although a fire brigade spokesperson had warned overnight of some "difficult" days ahead. Last month, fires on Greece's fifth-biggest island Chios, in the northern Aegean, destroyed 4,700 hectares (11,600 acres) of land, according to the WWF and the National Observatory of Athens research institute. The most destructive year for wildfires was 2023, when nearly 175,000 hectares were lost and there were 20 deaths. yap-mr-hec/phz/giv
