Discover Antiparos

Antiparos is a small island in the heart of the Cyclades, separated from Paros by a channel barely a kilometre wide and reached by a short ferry crossing from Pounta. It is an island you can cross in an afternoon and still not exhaust: a single whitewashed town, a handful of beaches within walking distance of one another, and a quiet that its larger neighbours lost long ago.

Life gathers along the main street of Chora, where the tavernas and cafés spill out under the bougainvillea in the evening. The beaches are the island’s great gift — Psaraliki, with its tamarisk trees and shallow turquoise water, Soros and Agios Georgios facing the uninhabited islet of Despotiko, and Sifneikos Gialos a few minutes from the port.

Antiparos has become quietly fashionable in recent years, but it has kept the scale and the manners of a fishing island, which is precisely why people return to it.

The island was known in antiquity as Oliaros. Its human story is far older than that name: on the islet of Saliagos, in the channel between Antiparos and Paros, archaeologists uncovered one of the earliest known settlements in the Cyclades, inhabited in the fifth millennium BC. On the neighbouring islet of Despotiko, excavation continues on a large Archaic sanctuary of Apollo, one of the most significant sites in the Aegean.

The Kastro at the centre of Chora dates from the fifteenth century, when the Venetian Leonardo Loredan built a fortified settlement whose houses formed the defensive wall itself — the tower is gone, but the ring of dwellings and its narrow gate still stand, and people live inside them today.

The island’s other landmark is the Cave of Antiparos, a vast chamber of stalactites on Mount Profitis Ilias that has drawn visitors since antiquity; its walls carry inscriptions left by those who came, and in 1673 the French ambassador Marquis de Nointel famously celebrated Christmas Mass deep inside it.

Chora is the island’s only town, and it is the reason Antiparos works so well on foot. The main street runs from the harbour to the Venetian Kastro, lined with tavernas, bakeries and shops, and everything else radiates from it.

The two Psaraliki beaches lie just beyond the edge of town — sand, shallow water and tamarisks for shade, close enough that you can go down for a swim before dinner and walk back. The port, with its ferries to Pounta and the summer boats to Despotiko and the Cave, is a few minutes away.

Both Bluewaves houses stand in the heart of Chora, roughly 350 metres from the main square and about five minutes’ walk from B’ Psaraliki beach: near enough to leave the car where it is for the whole holiday, and far enough from the main street to be quiet at night.

A new chapter of hospitality begins on Antiparos.

Two brand-new, self-contained houses opened their doors for the first time in the summer of 2026, in the heart of Chora, each sleeping up to four. Bluewaves Antiparos Moonstone Jacuzzi House is an elegant ground-floor house with a private garden, a generous terrace and an outdoor jacuzzi — made for privacy and for long, unhurried summer evenings. Bluewaves Antiparos Sunstone Terrace House sits on the first floor and is filled with light, opening onto a large private terrace where you can take the sun by day and the sea breeze after dark.

Both were built with real care and close attention to detail, with the emphasis on quality, comfort and hospitality, so that every guest feels genuinely at home.