Keratokambos Beach

About

A long, quiet south coast beach with a few tavernas and almost no development.

Keratokambos is a small settlement on the south coast with a long beach of soft golden sand and very clear water. There are no big hotels, just a few rooms and family tavernas along the shore. The pebbly seabed makes it nice for snorkelling.

This is the kind of place where you can spend days doing nothing much: swimming, reading under a tamarisk tree and eating fish in the evening. The Venetian tower of Kastri stands nearby, and the Portela gorge to the north is a challenging canyoning route. The drive from Heraklion takes about an hour and a half through the village of Viannos.

Viannos is the south-east corner of Heraklion, on the slopes of Mount Dikti above the Libyan Sea. The area is green, with olive groves, chestnut trees and banana greenhouses in warm valleys such as Arvi. The coast has quiet villages and beaches like Keratokambos, Tertsa and Psari Forada, far from mass tourism. In 1943 the villages of Viannos suffered one of the worst massacres of the German occupation, remembered at a memorial near Amiras.

Anreise

About 1 hour 20 minutes from Heraklion (72 km south east) via Viannos.

On the map

34.99842, 25.38295 · See on map