Kastellorizo

Kastellorizo, officially Megisti and known locally as Meis, is the most far-flung of all the Greek islands, lying roughly two kilometres off the Turkish coast near the town of Kas and around 120 kilometres east of Rhodes, to which it administratively belongs. It is tiny, with only a few hundred permanent residents concentrated in a single settlement, yet its horseshoe harbour, ringed with tall neoclassical mansions in ochre, red and blue, is one of the most beautiful in the Aegean.

The island's isolation shapes everything about it. There is one town, Kastellorizo itself, wrapping the deep natural harbour, overlooked by the ruins of a Knights of St John castle whose red stone gave the island its name. Behind the waterfront, restored mansions recall a wealthy past as a busy port of some 15,000 people before war, earthquake and emigration reduced it to a fraction of that. A Lycian rock-cut tomb near the harbour hints at habitation stretching back millennia.

Kastellorizo reached a wide audience as the setting for the 1991 Italian film Mediterraneo, whose gentle wartime story captured the island's dreamy, timeless mood, and it remains a quiet pilgrimage for the film's admirers. Beyond the harbour there are almost no roads and no real beaches; days are spent swimming from rocks and platforms in astonishingly clear water.

The island's natural showpiece is the Blue Cave (Parasta), a sea grotto on the coast reached only by small boat, where sunlight entering underwater turns the interior a luminous blue to rival Capri's. Boat trips also run to the nearby islet of Ro and, when regulations allow, across to Kas in Turkey for a change of scene.

Getting here is a commitment: a ferry from Rhodes takes several hours, and there are small domestic flights to the island's tiny airport. Come to Kastellorizo for its extraordinary harbour, its clear water and its end-of-the-world romance rather than for beaches or bustle. It is best in the warm months, and rewards those who linger a few unhurried days.