Aegina

What it is

The temple was built about 500-490 BC for Aphaia, a local goddess whom the Greeks later identified with Athena, and it stands on a pine-covered ridge in the north-east of the island. It is one of the best-preserved temples in Greece. Twenty-four of the original thirty-two Doric columns are still standing, and two tiers of columns survive inside the cella, which is something you cannot see anywhere in Athens.

Entry is €10 full and €5 reduced, and the ticket includes the site's scientific collection, so you can read the small finds with the building itself in front of you. Give the ridge at least an hour.

The pediments, and where they went

The painted pedimental sculptures, among the finest surviving late-Archaic Greek sculpture, were taken off the temple in 1811 by the architect Charles Cockerell and Baron Haller von Hallerstein. They passed to Ludwig I of Bavaria, and Thorvaldsen restored them. They have stood in the Glyptothek in Munich ever since.

So the temple you walk round is missing its best work, and the originals are behind glass a long way north. This is the second time in this guide that the finest part of a Greek building sits somewhere else, and the parallel with the Parthenon marbles is not lost on anyone in Greece.

The sacred triangle

Aphaia stands with the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion and the Hephaisteion in Athens at the points of an almost exact isosceles triangle. A second triangle links Delphi, the Parthenon and Aphaia. Whether the builders did this on purpose is argued about, though Aristotle and Strabo both wrote that sanctuary siting followed a rule, so the idea is not a modern invention.

It is still a good thing to know while you stand on the ridge, with Sounion to the south and Athens to the west, both theoretically in view.

Getting to it

The temple is about 12 km from the main port, and the island bus runs there from the harbour, so you can do it without a vehicle if the timetable suits you. Hiring a scooter or a small car at the port is the usual way and makes the rest of the island reachable. By car the drive from the port takes about 17 minutes.

From Agia Marina below the ridge it is a walk of about 30 minutes on foot or 6 minutes by car, and that path is the nicest approach if the heat allows it. The same ride also puts Palaiochora, the ruined medieval town, and the pistachio groves within easy reach of the day.

The scheduled ferry

From Piraeus it is about 75 minutes on a conventional boat and around 40 minutes on a fast craft, with several sailings a day all year. You buy a ticket, you get on, and you have the island for as long as you like, which is the entire point. Check the return times before you leave the port at Aegina, because the last boats fill up in summer.

The gate at Piraeus matters more than the time on the ticket, since the port is enormous and the signs can send you walking the wrong way. The Piraeus page explains why.

The three-island cruise

The cruise is a ten- to twelve-hour boat day calling at Hydra, Poros and Aegina, with lunch and usually music on board. You get roughly ninety minutes ashore at each island, which buys a walk round a harbour and a coffee and little else. As a day on the water it is a pleasant thing, and people who mainly want to sit on a deck come back happy.

As a way of seeing Aegina it is not one. The Temple of Aphaia is not in it, since the site sits up on a ridge far from the cruise timetable, and neither is Palaiochora. You see three ports and none of the interior.

That is the honest trade.

Which to book

If you want the temple, the pistachios and a swim, take the scheduled boat and make your own day. It leaves you with the whole island on your own timetable, and the temple ridge and the beaches are all reachable without a cruise operator's clock. If you want to sit in the sun with lunch provided and no decisions to make, take the cruise and do not expect to see anything of the island beyond its harbours.

Neither choice is wrong. They are different holidays. The day trips hub is blunt about the distinction and goes through it in more detail.

Aegina town

Aegina town has a neoclassical waterfront because the island was briefly the capital. It was the seat of the first government of independent Greece under Ioannis Kapodistrias, and the architecture still shows it. The link runs deeper than the facades.

Kapodistrias opened a mint on the island, and on 12 May 1829 it struck the phoenix, the first coin of the modern Greek state, on the same island where the first Greek coins of the ancient world had been struck. Down on the quay, fishing boats moor bow-in and sell fruit and vegetables straight off their decks. That floating market is the thing people remember, and it costs nothing to watch while you decide which taverna to choose.

Aegina works well as a day trip, so it is worth comparing it with the best tours in Athens before you fix your plans, and Athens guided tours make an easy next step.

Pistachios

Aegina pistachios have held protected designation of origin status since 1997, and they are the island's other export. The story starts with Nikolaos Peroglou, who planted the first organised plantation in 1896 on his estate from seed probably brought from Syria. The crop liked the island's thin soil and coastal air, and it spread from Aegina to Attica and the rest of Greece.

They are sold everywhere on the waterfront, in paper bags and in smarter boxes, and they are noticeably better than supermarket pistachios. Buy them plain and unsalted if you can, because salt hides the difference. They are the standard thing to take back to Athens, and they travel well.

Palaiochora and Agia Marina

Palaiochora was settled around 896 AD as an inland refuge from pirate raids and grew up the hillside, and it was said to hold 365 churches, one for each day of the year. Seventy are confirmed. Thirty-three still stand and are open, many with faded wall paintings among the rubble.

The end came in 1537, when Hayreddin Barbarossa besieged the town, took it after four days, demolished the houses and enslaved or killed the people. It is free to walk and usually empty, so go early and give it an hour. Agia Marina on the east coast is the main beach resort and sits below the temple ridge, which makes it the natural base for a morning at the site.

When to come

Weekdays in May, June, September and October are the answer. Athenians come at weekends all summer and the island is genuinely busy then, with the ferries full of day trippers by mid-morning and the waterfront loud by evening. The buses and the port feel it most, and a quiet swim is much easier midweek.

A Tuesday in October, with the season winding down and the pistachio bags fresh on the quay, the island is yours. If your only free days are summer weekends, take the first ferry out and plan the temple early, before the coaches and the tour groups arrive at the ridge.

Aegina is a working island

Aegina is bigger, closer and cheaper, with agriculture, a proper town, buses, scooters for hire and an important ancient temple. It is a working island that has mattered for a long time. It minted the first coins in the Greek world, silver sea turtle staters struck from the mid-sixth century BC, and it housed the first government of independent Greece.

That weight shows in what there is to do. You can walk to a temple, climb a ruined hill town, swim off organised beaches and eat properly, all on island buses if you do not hire anything. It is the better day if you want to do something, and the better value by a wide margin.

Hydra is a preserved harbour

Hydra is smaller, further and more expensive, and there are no cars on it at all. Goods move by mule, which tells you what kind of place it is. The harbour arrives at you all at once from the ferry deck, stone mansions rising straight from the water with no modern clutter above them, and that arrival is the reason people go.

There is no ancient temple and no ruin to tick off. What there is, is a preserved harbour you sit beside. It is the more beautiful approach and the better place to do nothing for a few hours. Hydra has the detail on boats, prices and what a day there involves.

If you have one island day

Aegina, for the temple and the price. The scheduled ferry gets you there in about 75 minutes, entry to Aphaia is €10, and you can add Palaiochora, the pistachio sellers and a swim without rushing. If you want the photograph and the quiet and do not mind the cost, Hydra.

Doing both in one day is what the cruises sell, and it is why they give you roughly ninety minutes at each, which is enough for a harbour and a coffee and nothing more. Pick one island and own it. You can always come back for the other, and the boats run all year.