Kassos

Kassos is very much off the beaten tourist track. Ever since 1824, when an Egyptian fleet punished Kassos for its active participation in the Greek revolution by slaughtering most of the 11,000 Kassiots, the island has remained barren and depopulated.

Sheer gorges slash through lunar terrain relieved only by fenced smallholdings of midget olive trees; spring grain crops briefly soften usually fallow terraces, and livestock somehow survives on a thin furze of scrub.

The remaining population occupies five villages facing Karpathos, leaving most of the island uninhabited and uncultivated, with crumbling old houses poignantly recalling better days.