Poros Town (Chora)

Your first impression of Poros comes from the town, and it comes all at once. The boat enters the channel, turns, and there it is: a mound covered in ice-cream-coloured houses rising like an amphitheatre up to a white clock tower. You do not need to look for the centre. The centre has been looking at you from minute one.

Chora, which is what Greeks call the capital of any island, takes up almost all of Sferia, the small volcanic half of Poros. Around four thousand inhabitants, a seafront nearly a kilometre long, and a maze of narrow lanes behind it that nobody has explained to you and where the good stuff is.

The seafront, or the village theatre

The Poros seafront is one of those things that works without anyone having designed it. Cafes, tavernas, small shops and ticket agencies in a row, and in front of them the constant parade of boats: fishing boats moored bow-first, sailing boats passing through, water taxis crossing to Neorio and the Galatas shuttle coming and going every ten minutes.

On the other side of the channel, two hundred metres away, you can see the village of Galatas in full detail. People stroll about over there and you watch them from here. That closeness turns the promenade into a sort of balcony over the mainland.

The best thing to do is sit down with a frappe in the middle of the afternoon and do nothing for an hour. It costs 3,50 euros and it is the best investment you will make on the island.

Climbing up to the Clock Tower

The tower was built in 1927 at the highest point of the town, and getting up to it is the compulsory walk in Poros. It is not a serious hike, more a steady climb up steps and cobbled alleys that takes fifteen or twenty minutes from the port.

The route is not signposted with any great insistence, but the rule is simple: always go up. Any street that climbs will eventually take you to the top, and along the way it shows you the part of Chora that you cannot see from the water: courtyards with bougainvillea, tiny churches, cats flattened out in the sun and women watering their pots.

At the top there are views of almost 360 degrees. The channel, the rooftops of the town, the mountains of the Peloponnese opposite, the open sea towards Hydra to the south. At sunset it fills up, and rightly so: the light over the channel at that hour is the reason many people come back to Poros.

One practical warning: go up with water and shoes that grip. The flagstones have been polished by a century of footsteps and flip-flops slide on them. And avoid doing it between two and five in the afternoon in July or August, because there is no shade on almost the whole route.

What lies behind the first row

Almost all day visitors stay on the seafront and miss the best of it. Behind the first row of buildings there are small squares where life carries on quite apart from tourism.

Iroon Square is the main hub, with the banks, the cash machines and the bus stop for the bus that crosses to Kalavria. From there, climbing up any which way, you find tavernas with no laminated menu and village prices rather than harbour prices.

The Archaeological Museum of Poros, on Korizi Square, sits right in that in-between zone. It is small and free, and it holds the finds from the sanctuary of Poseidon excavated on Kalavria. Half an hour well spent, especially if you are going to see the ruins afterwards and want to understand what you are looking at.

Where to eat without falling into the tourist trap

The golden rule in Chora is the usual one: the further from the ferry berth, the better you eat. The tavernas at the eastern end of the promenade and those on the inner streets offer better value than the first three or four you see as you step off the boat.

The classics that come up again and again in local recommendations are Oasis, next to the port, with home cooking and restrained prices, and Poseidon, a bit pricier and focused on fish, with the occasional evening of Greek music. And if you fancy trying something genuinely local, ask about kakavia, the fishermen’s fish soup.

When to go and what to expect

Chora is alive from May to October. In July and August it fills up with weekending Athenians, above all from Friday to Sunday, and the seafront becomes a human funnel at nine in the evening. Midweek, even in August, the pace drops noticeably.

In low season many terraces close, but the town does not die off completely: it is the capital of an island inhabited all year round, with a school, a market and a pharmacy. That continuity is part of its charm.

Everything else sets off from here. The bus to the beaches of southern Kalavria, the water taxi to Neorio and Russian Bay, and the shuttle to Galatas to cross over to the lemon forest or carry on to Epidaurus. Chora is not just something to see in Poros: it is the point from which you organise everything else.