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Skyros is the southernmost island
Island

An island or isle is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets....
 of the Sporades
Sporades

The Sporades are an archipelago along the east coast of Greece, northeast of the island of Euboea, in the Aegean Sea. It consists of 24 islands, of which five are inhabited: Alonnisos, Skiathos, Skopelos, Peristera and Skyros....
, a Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 archipelago in the Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkans and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively....
. Around the 2nd millennium BC and slightly later, the island was known as The Island of the Magnetes where the Magnetes used to live and later Pelasgia and Dolopia and later Skyros. At 209 kmē it is the largest of the Sporades, and has a population of about 3,000 (in 2003). Skyros is one of the municipalities that are not part of any provinces in Greece.

north of the island is covered by forest, and includes the island's highest point, Mount Olympus (792 m), while the south, dominated by the mountain of Kochila, is bare and rocky.






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Skyros is the southernmost island
Island

An island or isle is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets....
 of the Sporades
Sporades

The Sporades are an archipelago along the east coast of Greece, northeast of the island of Euboea, in the Aegean Sea. It consists of 24 islands, of which five are inhabited: Alonnisos, Skiathos, Skopelos, Peristera and Skyros....
, a Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 archipelago in the Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkans and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively....
. Around the 2nd millennium BC and slightly later, the island was known as The Island of the Magnetes where the Magnetes used to live and later Pelasgia and Dolopia and later Skyros. At 209 kmē it is the largest of the Sporades, and has a population of about 3,000 (in 2003). Skyros is one of the municipalities that are not part of any provinces in Greece.

Geography

The north of the island is covered by forest, and includes the island's highest point, Mount Olympus (792 m), while the south, dominated by the mountain of Kochila, is bare and rocky. The island's capital is also called Skyros (or, locally, Chora). The main port, on the west coast, is Linaria. The island has a castle
Castle

A castle is a defensive structure seen as one of the main symbols of the Middle Ages. The term has a history of scholarly debate surrounding its exact meaning, but it is usually regarded as being distinct from the general terms fort or fortress in that it describes a residence of a monarch or noble and commands a specific defensive territor...
 (the kastro) that dates from the Venetian occupation (13th to 15th centuries), a Byzantine monastery
Monastery

Monastery , a term derived from the Greek language word ???ast?????, neut. of ???ast????? - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of Monk, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in Cenobium or alone ....
 (the Monastery of Saint George
Monastery of Saint George, Skyros

The Monastery of Saint George of Skyros is a Byzantine Empire monastery on the Greece island of Skyros.The monastery was founded in AD 962....
), the grave of English poet Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke

Rupert Chawner Brooke was an England poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the World War I ; however, he never experienced combat at first hand....
 at Tris Boukes harbour, and the Bronze Age
Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is, with respect to a given prehistory, the period in that society when the most advanced metalworking included smelting copper and tin from naturally-occurring outcroppings of copper and tin ores, creating a bronze alloy by melting those metals together, and casting them into bronze artifact s....
 archaeological site of Palamari
Palamari

Palamari , older forms: Palamario and Palamarion, is a Greece village located around 15 km...
. There are many beaches on the coast. The island has its own breed of Skyrian ponies
Skyros Pony

The Skyros Pony is a breed of pony found on the Greece isle of Skyros....
. Skyros can be reached by ferry from Kimi on Euboea
Euboea

For the Greek mythology figure, see Euboea Euboea is the second largest of the Greece Aegean Islands and the second largest List of islands of Greece overall in area and population, after Crete....
.

History

According to Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Theseus
Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was a legendary king of Athens, son of Aethra , and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, with whom Aethra lay in one night....
 died on Skyros. Neoptolemus
Neoptolemus

In Greek mythology, Neoptolemus was the son of the warrior Achilles and the princess Deidamia . Achilles' mother foretold many years before Achilles birth that there would be a great war....
, son of Achilles
Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greeks hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad, which takes for its theme ; the Wrath of Achilles....
, was from Skyros (or Scyros, as its name is sometimes transliterated), as told in the play by Sophocles
Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
, Philoctetes
Philoctetes

In Greek mythology, Philoctetes was the son of King Poeas of Meliboea in Thessaly. He was a Greek hero, famed as an archer, and was a participant in the Trojan War....
 (line 239).

In 475 BC, Cimon defeated the Dolopians and conquered the entire island. The population was enslaved and replaced by colonists from Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
. From that date, it became a part of the Delian League
Delian League

The Delian League was an association of approximately 150 5th-century BC Ancient Greece city-states under the leadership of Classical Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victory in the Battle of Plataea at the end of the Greco?Persian Wars....
, later to become the Athenian Empire. Cimon claimed to have found the remains of Theseus, and returned them to Athens.

In 340 BC the Macedon
Macedon

Macedon or Macedonia was the name of a monarchy centred in the northernmost part of ancient Greece. The homeland of the ancient Macedonians, it was bordered by the kingdom of Epirus to the west and the region of Thrace to the east....
ians took over the island and dominated it until 192 BC, when the king Philip
Philip V of Macedon

File:Philip_V_of_Macedon BM.jpgPhilip V was King of Macedon from 221 BC to 179 BC. Philip's reign was principally marked by an unsuccessful struggle with the emerging power of Roman Republic....
 and the Roman Republican
Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the Ancient Rome characterized by a republican form of government; a period which began with the overthrow of the Roman Roman Kingdom, c....
 forces restored it to Athens.

Historical Population