Spetsopoula: Can You Land on the Niarchos Island?
A shipping magnate's island lies a third of a nautical mile off Spetses. Greek law puts its foreshore in public hands. The rest of the island is private.
Spetsopoula, the wooded island on the horizon, seen from above the Old Harbour headland on Spetses. Photo by dronepicr, CC BY 2.0
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A Guide to Spetsopoula, the Niarchos Island Off Spetses
Spetsopoula is a private island a third of a nautical mile off the south-east corner of Spetses, still used by the Niarchos family. Look south-east from the Old Harbour and it is the low, wooded island across the water. Stavros Niarchos, the Greek shipping magnate, acquired it from a Spetses shipping family in the 1950s or early 1960s (the accounts differ), and his family still uses it today.
Whose Island It Is, and Whether You Can Land
Two questions come up about it: whose island it is, and whether you can go ashore. The first has a long answer. The second has a legal answer that stops short of a yes, and it is more interesting than the tourist guides suggest.
Spetsopoula at a Glance
| Spetsopoula | |
|---|---|
| Where | Just south-east of Spetses, part of the Municipality of Spetses, Greece |
| Size | About 2 km² |
| Channel to Spetses | About a third of a nautical mile (roughly 630 m) at its narrowest |
| From Porto Heli | About 5.7 nautical miles, in a straight line, to its nearest shore |
| Inland ownership | A private company; the Niarchos family still uses the island |
| Natura 2000 | Not designated |
| Landing | The foreshore is public in Greek law. The rest of the island is private, and we have not confirmed any rules on approaching it. |
Distances and area measured by SailChecker from OpenStreetMap coastline outlines, September 2026 (straight-line, not a sailing route). Natura 2000 status from the European Environment Agency's 2024 dataset. Law: Law 5092/2024, Article 6 (Government Gazette Α' 33, 4 March 2024).
1.The Island Next Door
What You See From Spetses
Spetsopoula sits just off the south-east corner of Spetses, close enough that the channel between the two narrows to about a third of a nautical mile. It covers about two square kilometres and is part of the Municipality of Spetses. From the water it is low and thickly wooded.
The inland part of the island is owned by a private company, and the Niarchos family still uses it. It is not part of any Natura 2000 site; the European Environment Agency's 2024 dataset shows none covering it.
Creole, the 1927 schooner Niarchos owned, at anchor off Saint-Tropez in 2010, long after his time. Photo by Liliane Paingaud, CC BY-SA 3.0
2.The Niarchos Years
A Shipping Magnate's Estate
Stavros Niarchos acquired Spetsopoula from the descendants of Ioannis Leonidas, a Spetses shipowner and politician. Accounts differ on when: some English-language sources say 1962, while Greek accounts put it in the mid-1950s.
He made it a private hunting estate, stocked with deer, roe deer, rabbits, pheasants, partridges and quail. His yacht was Creole, a 63 metre schooner built by Camper & Nicholsons in 1927. He sold her in 1977; she now belongs to Alessandra and Allegra Gucci, and still races at Mediterranean classic regattas.
The island is also where Eugenia Livanos, who had been married to Niarchos, died in May 1970 of a barbiturate overdose. That August the Piraeus prosecutor recommended a charge against him; he was cleared later that year. Niarchos died in Zurich in April 1996, and his family still uses the island.
3.Can You Land on a Private Greek Island?
What Greek Law Says
In Greece the foreshore is public. Law 5092/2024, which in March 2024 replaced the ownership and access rules of the old coastal law, says the foreshore and the beach behind it belong to the public domain and exist for common use, and that their main purpose is free and unobstructed public access. We can find no exception in the law for privately owned islands.
That is not the same as permission to go ashore on Spetsopoula. The law's rule on passage across private land only covers land between the shore and a public road, and there is none here. The beach zone can extend up to 50 metres inland, but where the line falls on this island depends on an official boundary decision we could not find published. And the state can restrict the sea itself: in 2015 a ministerial decision banned the passage of any vessel in the waters around Skorpios, in the Ionian.
So the honest answer is that Spetsopoula's foreshore is public in law, the rest of the island is private, and we have not confirmed what rules, if any, apply to approaching it. The Spetses port authority is the body that would know.
4.Seeing It From the Water
Spetses, Porto Heli and the Channel
The easiest view is from Spetses itself. The Old Harbour at Baltiza, where visiting yachts berth, looks out towards Spetsopoula. Mooring there changed in 2025: in January the port authority banned mooring on 77 of the harbour's fixed moorings, and in February the Shipping Ministry allowed yachts to anchor on their own ground tackle, so check the current arrangement before you arrive.
Elsewhere on Spetses, yachts anchor in Zogeria Bay on the north-west coast, as in the photograph. The cruising notes also list Agia Paraskevi, a sand bottom open to the south-west, and Agii Anargyroi, sand with good holding, and say anchoring in Lazareto cove is not possible in the season.
For a charter, Porto Heli on the mainland is the nearest base in our search, about 5.7 nautical miles from Spetsopoula in a straight line. At the time of writing it has 20 boats: 10 catamarans, 9 motor yachts and a gulet. The Athens marinas are the other option, a longer passage south, with more than 1,800 boats in our search. Our Saronic Gulf sailing itinerary takes in Spetses, and our guide to catamaran charter in the Greek islands covers the catamarans that make up half the Porto Heli fleet.
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