They’re award winners all. You’ve seen their photos, peacock blue-green waters and golden sand and smooth pebbles. So to select the best beaches of a country like Greece, with the eleventh longest coastline in the world and hundreds of beaches awarded the international Blue Flag for eco-quality is no easy task. We’ve picked ten of the best, but there are countless others that are superb, exotic, gorgeous … the superlatives go on and on.
Lalaria Beach
What words could capture the magic of Lalaria? Skiathos’ trademark island has often won the title of most stunning beach as its fame has spread around the world. Its emerald water and smooth white pebbles under towering rockface attract dozens of boats daily, loaded with eager visitors who can’t wait to see it up close.
Sarakiniko Beach
Milky white volcanic rocks as soft as chalk, sculpted into intriguing shapes by the wind and waves on the northern coast of Milos. There’s a deep gulf with green water that turns every shade of blue as you get further from shore. Psychedelic.
Kolymbithres Beach
This famous beach tucked into the bay of Naoussa, in northern Paros, has gorgeous blue-green water and smooth greyish rocks chiselled into phantasmagorical shapes and interspersed with delicious golden coves of varying sizes.
Paros: A Cycladic dream in the middle of the Aegean
Super Paradise Beach
The beaches of Mykonos have won fame as the best in the Aegean, thanks to their crystalline waters and golden sand, not to mention multi-starred service and flawless organisation. One of the most impressive lives up to its name, Super Paradise, a vast sandy bay with translucent turquoise water. Dive in, open your eyes before you surface and you’ll know at once why it ranks as one of the best in Greece.
Myrtos Beach
This amazing beach between Assos and Argostoli, on Kefalonia, is literally breathtaking. Unquestionably the most famous on the island, it must be included in any top beach list for Greece. White sand, fine pebbles, azure waters at the foot of impossibly high cliffs – once seen, it’s unforgettable.
The wild beauty of Kefalonia’s Myrtos beach
Canal D' Amour Beach
Between Corfu’s Sidari and Peroulades, this surreal setting has to be seen to be believed: white sculpted rocks, grottoes, little beaches, blue-green water. And among the unusual formations, the Canal d’Amour stands out. They say that whoever swims the narrow opening in the rock will find the love of their life on the other side.
Porto Katsiki Beach
This beach, at the foot of an enormous white cliff that turns orange with the sunset, has been voted one of the six best in the entire Mediterranean. On an island renowned for its beaches, that is some accolade.
The majesty of Porto Katsiki beach on Lefkada
Balos Beach
Another of the most exotic beaches in Greece that’s considered one of the finest in the Med, Balos lies in western Crete near Kissamos. Here the sand glistens pink and white, the water combines the most dazzling shades of blue and green, while the islet of Gramvousa, with its Venetian castle, adds a fairy-tale note to the scene.
Voidokoilia Beach
Photos of this beach in Messinia have gone viral. The white sand that surrounds the delicious blue-green water is such a perfect semicircle one suspects a draughtsman’s hand. The unspoiled environment behind it is yet another reason why this ranks among Greece’s top ten beaches.