Ano Mera and the quiet side of Mykonos

Almost in the heart of the island, about 8 km from Chora, on the road to the north-eastern beaches. The municipality counts 1,459 inhabitants and describes it as the village where you find a different Mykonos, of whitewashed lanes and traditional tavernas.

Its main square, pedestrianised in 2001, opens in front of the white walls of the Monastery of Panagia Tourliani, and the rest of the village grew around it.

The spiritual centre of Mykonos. According to the municipality, two monks who had fled pirates on Paros in 1537 settled here, beside a small existing church, and the monastery was founded in 1542 to keep safe a miraculous icon of the Virgin found on the island’s shore.

There are two stories behind the name: either the icon, inscribed on its silver cover as ‘the Ekatontapyliani of Paros’, was found in the sea off Tourlos, or it comes from a nun called Tourli who lived here as a hermit. The island’s ships, the municipality adds, never sailed before their crews had prayed to it.

The monastery also owned windmills, mostly through donations, in the years when Ano Mera, like Chora, ground its own grain; the story of those mills is in the windmills of Mykonos.

On 23 August, the leave-taking of the feast of the Dormition, when the monastery celebrates with the whole island. Two more dates mark the year: on the Saturday of the first week of Lent the icon is carried down to Chora, and on Lazarus Saturday, before Palm Sunday, it goes back up.

Islanders walk the whole way with it, about 7 km, a custom the municipality dates back to 1542. During Lent the icon stays in one of the three parish churches of Chora: Megali Panagia, Panachrantos or Agia Kyriaki.

Meat and cheese. The tavernas around the square are known, in the municipality’s words, for their Mykonian meats on the spit and the grill, served with the island’s spicy cheese, kopanisti, which is made in a workshop in the village.

It is a lunch or early-dinner stop rather than a night out: the island’s nights are back in Mykonos Town.

History, mostly. Under the low mound on Ftelia beach, once taken for the tomb of Ajax the Lesser, archaeologists found a Late Neolithic settlement from 5000–4500 BC, whose copper and bronze pins the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades counts among the first steps of metallurgy in the Aegean.

On the north-western cape stands the Armenistis lighthouse, built in 1891 after the steamer Volta was wrecked nearby in 1887. It still works, for the Hellenic Navy’s lighthouse service, looks out over Delos and Tinos, and its original lens is kept in the Aegean Maritime Museum in Chora.

Yes, from the old port of Chora. On the KTEL winter timetable valid from 1 November 2026, these are the departures:

The summer 2027 timetable is not out yet. For a taxi, the official fares and the ranks in town are in taxi and bus prices in Mykonos.