A Picasso painting stolen from Greece’s National Gallery has been found hidden in a ravine nearly nine years after it vanished, officials announced on Tuesday. The painting – which was personally donated by the Spanish master to the Greek people – was stolen alongside two other artworks in an audacious heist in 2012. Until now, … Read more
Greece’s largest migrant camp has been destroyed by a fire that is thought to have broken out amid clashes between security forces and asylum seekers who had tested positive for coronavirus refused to go into isolation. The Moria camp, on the island of Lesbos, was ‘completely destroyed’ by a blaze which began in the early … Read more
The stupidity of not buying a proper pair of walking boots becomes apparent during our first day of hiking seven miles through undergrowth and fording mountain streams. But this is offset by the pleasure of having chosen the Pelion peninsula as the place to take a ‘long walk for freedom’ after months of UK lockdown. … Read more
A cat crouches in the dappled sunlight beneath a trellis of bougainvillea, watching me sip Greek coffee and eyeing my baklava. This traditional Kafeneion (coffee shop) is behind the cathedral of Chora — the main (and only) town on the island of Ios. It’s a warren of narrow lanes that wind steeply to the cliff-edge … Read more
Bearded, earnest, erudite, Theo the naturalist was surely the most charming character in The Durrells, the recent ITV drama inspired by Gerald Durrell’s memoir My Family And Other Animals. It was Theo who opened a young Gerald’s eyes to the marvels of Greek wildlife. And now here we are being guided through a pine forest … Read more
A ship carrying 600 asylum seekers has departed from Lesbos to a closed camp in northern Greece amid the coronavirus crisis. The migrants arrived at the port of Mytilene in the Greek island of Lesbos, ahead of their departure with the ship, named ‘Aqua Blue’. Clashes broke out overnight on Greece’s border with Turkey after … Read more
‘They’ll have the coat off your back, they’ll skin you alive, my child!’ This was the warning Patrick Leigh Fermor was given in Sparta, when he said he was going to the Mani in the early Fifties. Having walked across Europe at the age of 18 and kidnapped a German general on Crete from under … Read more