Skyros

Skyros is an island in Greece, the southernmost of the Sporades, in archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Around the 2nd millennium BC and slightly later, the island was known as The Island of the Magnetes where the Magnetes used to live and later Pelasgia and Dolopia and later Skyros. At 209 square kilometres it is the largest island of the Sporades, and has a population of about 3,000 (in 2011). It is part of the regional unit of Euboea. The Hellenic Air Force has a major base in Skyros, because of the island’s strategic location in the middle of the Aegean. The north of the island is covered by a forest, while the south, dominated by the highest mountain, called Kochila, (792 m), is bare and rocky. The island’s capital is also called Skyros (or, locally, Chora). The main port, on the west coast, is Linaria. The island has a castle that dates from the Venetian occupation (13th to 15th centuries), a Byzantine monastery (the Monastery of Saint George). There are many beaches. The island has its own breed of Skyrian ponies.