18 Things to Do in Mykonos, Greece, and What They Cost

Mykonos rewards 3 days: 1 for Chora and the windmills, 1 for Delos, and 1 for a beach that matches the day you want. Mykonos is also the most expensive Greek island, so the cost sits beside each of the 18 things to do below rather than in a footnote. A sunbed at a mid-tier beach club runs roughly €80-150 ($93-174, £69-129) a person once lunch is on the bill, while the windmills, the lanes of Chora and the quiet northern beaches cost nothing at all.

The island’s reputation is beach clubs, celebrity sightings and a nightlife that starts at midnight, and all of that is real. Underneath it sits a 7th-century BC vase holding the oldest known picture of the Trojan Horse, a 13th-century Venetian castle above Ano Mera, a sacred island 30 minutes offshore that Greeks emptied of the living, and about 800 family chapels. This guide covers both versions of Mykonos.

18 things to do in Mykonos, Greece

The 18 things to do in Mykonos below are ordered by how much of the island they show you, starting with Chora and the sights nobody should skip and ending with the food and the water sports.

1. Watch the sunset from Little Venice

Little Venice is the row of 18th-century sea captains’ houses on the south-west edge of Chora, built with their balconies hanging directly over the water, and it is the sunset spot on Mykonos. Alefkantra is its proper name, and the Venice comparison comes from the way the waves break under the balconies. The bars along the front charge accordingly, so arrive an hour before sunset for a table, or watch for free from the rocks below the windmills 200 m (656.2 ft) away.

2. See the Kato Mili windmills

The Kato Mili windmills are the row of whitewashed, conical-roofed mills on the ridge above Little Venice, and they are the island’s signature view. Mykonos had more than 16 of them, built between the 16th and 19th centuries by the Venetians and later owners to grind grain brought in from other islands, and 6 survive in the Kato Mili row. Viewing them is free and takes 10 minutes. The Bonis Windmill at Ano Mili, on the edge of town, has been restored as an agricultural museum with its threshing floor, well, oven, wine press and dovecote.

3. Sail to Delos

Delos is a UNESCO World Heritage Site 30 to 40 minutes by boat from Mykonos Old Port, and it is the single strongest reason to come to this island. The whole island is an excavated ancient city: temples, a theatre, houses with intact mosaics, and the Terrace of the Lions, whose row of marble beasts faces the sacred lake where myth puts the birth of Apollo and Artemis. Nobody has been allowed to be born or die on Delos since antiquity, and nobody lives there now.

Boats leave from the Old Port in the morning and come back in the early afternoon, so budget most of a day. Entry to the archaeological site costs about €20 ($23, £17) and the return boat about €25 ($29, £22), and both the site and the sailings run on a seasonal timetable, so check before you go. There is no shade and no food on the island; bring water, a hat and sun cream.

To combine Delos with the uninhabited island of Rhenia and some snorkelling, check out this day tour.

4. Get lost in Chora and find Panagia Paraportiani

Chora, or Mykonos Town, is a deliberate maze: the lanes were laid out to confuse raiding pirates, and they still work on visitors. Walking it without a destination is the point, and Matoyianni is the main shopping street if you want one. At the entrance to the Kastro quarter stands Panagia Paraportiani, 5 small churches fused into one whitewashed, sculptural mass over several centuries from the 14th onwards, and the most photographed church in Greece after the ones on Santorini. It is free to look at, and the interior is rarely open.

5. Pick a beach that matches the day you want

Mykonos beaches divide sharply between party, polished and empty, and picking wrong ruins a day. The 4 kinds are listed below, south coast first.

1. Party beaches: Paradise and Super Paradise on the south coast, where the music starts in the afternoon, the bars run until late and clothing is optional at parts of both.
2. Beach-club beaches: Psarou and Ornos, where Nammos and its neighbours set the island’s price ceiling and the crowd is there to be seen. These are not quiet family beaches.
3. Family beaches: Platys Gialos, Agios Ioannis and Kalo Livadi, which have organised sunbeds, tavernas, shallow water and a bus service.
4. Quiet beaches: Agios Sostis on the north coast, which has no sunbeds, no umbrellas and no beach bar, and Fokos, which has one taverna and nothing else. Both need a car or a scooter.

Elia is the longest sandy beach on the island and sits between the categories, organised at one end and quieter at the other.

6. Book a beach club, once you know the price

A Mykonos beach club charges for the sunbed and then sets a minimum spend on food and drink, and that combination is what makes the island expensive. A mid-tier club works out at roughly €80-150 ($93-174, £69-129) a person for a bed and lunch, and the flagship venues such as Nammos on Psarou and SantAnna on Paraga run to €300-600 ($348-696, £258-516) a couple, with front-row beds priced well above back-row ones. Book ahead in July and August, ask what the minimum spend is before you sit down, and take a taxi rather than a hire car if wine is involved.

7. Drive to Ano Mera and the Monastery of Panagia Tourliani

Ano Mera is the only other real village on Mykonos, 8 km (5.0 mi) inland from Chora, and its 16th-century Monastery of Panagia Tourliani is the island’s most important religious building. The whitewashed exterior carries a red dome and a marble bell tower, and inside there is a carved wooden iconostasis made by Florentine craftsmen in the Baroque style, along with a marble fountain in the courtyard. Opening hours are limited and sometimes by arrangement, so call or ask at your hotel before making the trip. The village square has tavernas and a produce market, and it is the cheapest lunch you will eat on the island.

To see the village and the rest of the island with a guide, check out this half-day tour.

8. Climb to the ruins of Gyzi Castle

Gyzi Castle is the 13th-century Venetian fortress on the hill above Ano Mera, built by the Ghizi brothers of Venice, who took Mykonos and Tinos after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 and ruled here until 1390. Ottoman raids ended the Venetian period, the castle was abandoned, and what stands now is a walled ruin of about 2,840 m² (30,570 sq ft) with the Church of the Holy Trinity inside it and medieval buildings scattered on the slope below. The walls show Hellenistic, Byzantine and Venetian building phases stacked on each other. The site is unfenced, free and mostly empty, and the view over the northern coast is the reason to make the climb.

9. Snorkel or dive Paradise House Reef

Paradise House Reef is a rocky outcrop off Paradise Beach and the island’s most accessible dive site, with seahorses, sponges, octopus, moray eels, starfish and barracuda on it. September is the month divers prefer here, when the water is at its warmest and the seabed is clearest after the summer.

Never dived before? Check out this 2-hour mini scuba diving course for beginners. If you would rather stay on the surface, this 7-hour snorkelling tour works its way along the south-coast beaches.

10. Windsurf at Ftelia or Kalafatis

Ftelia and Kalafatis are the windsurfing beaches on Mykonos, and the wind that makes them work is the same meltemi that blows sunhats off the terraces in Chora. The meltemi is a dry northerly that runs from June to September and peaks in July and August, reaching 7 or 8 on the Beaufort scale in a strong year, which is why the Venetians built their mills here. Both beaches have schools running private lessons for beginners, and Korfos, closer to town, is the shallow, flat-water option for a first attempt. Kalafatis also runs kitesurfing, diving and jet-skiing.

11. Watch a film outdoors at Cine Manto

Cine Manto is an open-air cinema in the Municipal Garden of Meletopoulos in the centre of Chora, screening films in their original language with Greek subtitles, under the stars, in a garden of palms, pines and cacti. There is a cafe and restaurant on the site serving breakfast through to a barbecue dinner. The season runs from June to the end of September, and it is the one evening on Mykonos that costs the price of a cinema ticket.

12. See the Mykonos Vase at the Archaeological Museum

The Archaeological Museum of Mykonos, near the Old Port, holds the Mykonos Vase, a relief pithos made around 670 BC that carries the oldest known image of the Trojan Horse. The horse has wheels under its hooves and 7 small windows down its flank, with the face of an armed Greek warrior showing through each one. A well-digger found it in 1961, reused as a burial jar with human bones inside. The rest of the collection comes largely from the burial pit on nearby Rheneia, where the Athenians moved the graves cleared off Delos.

13. Visit the Aegean Maritime Museum and Lena’s House

The Aegean Maritime Museum and Lena’s House sit a few minutes apart in Chora and together take about an hour. The maritime museum, founded in 1983 and housed since 1985 in a 19th-century captain’s house, holds ship models running from the pre-Minoan period to the early 20th century, along with charts, engravings, instruments and coins with ships on them from the 5th century BC. The original mechanism of the Armenistis lighthouse turns in its garden. Lena’s House, part of the Folklore Museum, is a middle-class Mykonian home of the 19th century left exactly as its last occupant, Lena Skrivanou, kept it until 1968.

14. Walk out to the Armenistis lighthouse

The Armenistis lighthouse stands on the north-west cape looking across the strait to Tinos, and it was built in 1891 after the steamship Volta went down off Tsoukali in 1887 with heavy loss of life. It is a 20-minute drive from Chora plus a short walk, the light itself is not open, and the reason to go is the sunset over the channel with almost nobody else there.

15. Eat kopanisti, louza and amygdalota

Mykonian food is worth ordering by name rather than eating whatever the menu translates as Greek. Kopanisti Mykonou is a soft, sharp, peppery fermented cheese with protected designation of origin status, made on the island for around 300 years and often called the Greek Roquefort. Louza is pork fillet cured with savory and allspice and dried in the sun, sliced thin. Amygdalota are almond biscuits, baked here rather than left soft as on other Cycladic islands. Ask for all 3 in a village taverna rather than on the waterfront.

16. Take a cooking class or a food tour

A Mykonian cooking class teaches you the dishes above and usually feeds you the results, and the island’s food tours take in organic farms, old bakeries, a brewery and a winery. It is also the cheapest way to eat well on Mykonos, because a class costs less than dinner for two at a beach club. Want to cook with the locals? This cooking class comes highly recommended.

17. Find one of the 800 chapels

Mykonos has around 800 chapels for a permanent population of about 10,700, because families built their own and still maintain them, and hunting them down is a good reason to drive the island’s back roads. Most are locked and open once a year for their saint’s feast day, which is when the village around them eats together. Agios Ioannis, Paraportiani and the chapel above Agios Sostis beach are the ones most visitors see.

18. Take a ferry to another Cycladic island

Mykonos sits in the middle of the Cyclades, which makes it a good base rather than an endpoint. Tinos is 15 to 30 minutes away and is the most important pilgrimage site in Greece; Paros, Naxos and Ios are 1 to 2 hours; and Santorini is roughly 2 to 3 hours by fast ferry. Sailings are frequent in summer and thin out from October, and the meltemi cancels them occasionally in August, so never plan a same-day connection to a flight.

How to get to Mykonos

You get to Mykonos by a 40-minute flight from Athens, by fast ferry from Rafina or Piraeus, or by a direct summer flight from another European city. Mykonos airport (JMK) sits about 4 km (2.5 mi) from Chora, and the ferries dock at the New Port at Tourlos.

Ferries from Rafina, the closer of the two Athens ports to the airport, take a little over 2 hours on a fast boat and up to about 4 hours 40 minutes on a conventional one. From Piraeus, allow about 2.5 to 3 hours on a fast ferry and 4 to 5.5 hours otherwise. Rafina is the better choice if you are connecting from a flight, Piraeus if you are staying in central Athens. Compare fares on Trip.com for flights to Greece first, then check ferry routes and prices to the Greek islands, because the flight and the boat often cost the same and the boat runs later in the day.

Getting around Mykonos

You get around Mykonos on the KTEL bus network, which is cheap, frequent in summer and enough for most visitors. Two stations serve Chora: Fabrika, at the top of town, runs to the airport, the New Port, Platys Gialos, Ornos, Agios Ioannis, Paradise, Paraga and Super Paradise, while the Old Port station runs to Ano Mera, Kalafatis, Elia, Kalo Livadi, Panormos and Agios Stefanos.

A car or a quad opens up the north coast, Gyzi Castle, Fokos and Agios Sostis, none of which the bus reaches usefully. Parking in Chora is close to impossible in August and the town centre is pedestrian anyway, so leave the car at the edge. DiscoverCars compares hire cars for Mykonos across the companies operating on the island, which matters here because the local fleet sells out for August by spring.

When to visit Mykonos

May, June, September and early October are the months to visit Mykonos, with warm sea, working beach clubs and prices below the July and August peak. July and August bring the highest prices, the fullest ferries and the strongest meltemi wind, which can close the exposed beaches for a day at a time. From November to March most hotels, clubs and restaurants close, the ferry timetable thins out and the island goes back to being a quiet Cycladic village, which some travellers prefer and most find frustrating.

What Mykonos costs

Mykonos costs roughly €200-300 ($232-348, £172-258) a person a day at a mid-range standard in season, which is more than any other Greek island. Budget travellers using the bus, self-catering and the free beaches can hold it to about €65-85 ($75-99, £56-73) a day, and anyone booking beach clubs and 5-star hotels should expect €500 ($580, £430) a day and up. A mid-range hotel room in season averages roughly €150-220 ($174-255, £129-189) a night.

Three habits cut the bill without ruining the trip. Eat lunch in Ano Mera or at a back-street taverna in Chora rather than on the waterfront, use the bus for the south-coast beaches, and spend at least one beach day at Agios Sostis or Fokos, where there is nothing to pay for.

Where to stay in Mykonos

Stay in Chora for the lanes, the restaurants and the nightlife, in Ornos or Platys Gialos for a beach on your doorstep with a bus into town, and in Ano Mera for quiet and lower prices with a car. Book early: Mykonos is small, the season is short and August fills months ahead. Compare hotels in Mykonos on Booking.com by area before you fix a beach, because the island’s geography decides how much time you spend in a taxi.

Do not forget travel insurance

Travel insurance covers what planning cannot: a cancelled ferry, a stolen phone, a scooter accident on a gravel road to a northern beach, or an illness that needs a clinic. EU citizens should carry a European Health Insurance Card and UK visitors a Global Health Insurance Card, and everyone needs a policy on top of that for the things a health card does not touch. Sofie has carried travel insurance since she started travelling, and the insurer Wonderful Wanderings uses is SafetyWing, whose plans can be bought after a trip has already started.

Mykonos FAQ

What is Mykonos best known for?

Mykonos is known for its beach clubs, its nightlife and the whitewashed lanes of Chora, plus the Kato Mili windmills and the sunset from Little Venice. It is also the gateway to Delos, the UNESCO-listed ancient city 30 minutes offshore, which is the island’s real historical draw.

Is Mykonos expensive?

Yes, Mykonos is the most expensive Greek island. Mid-range travel runs about €200-300 ($232-348, £172-258) a person a day in season, a mid-tier beach club costs €80-150 ($93-174, £69-129) a person with lunch, and a flagship club can pass €300 ($348, £258) a couple. Buses, village tavernas and the unorganised northern beaches are how people bring that down.

How many days do you need in Mykonos?

Plan 3 days in Mykonos: 1 for Chora, the windmills and Little Venice, 1 for Delos, and 1 for a beach. A fourth day lets you add Ano Mera, Gyzi Castle and the quiet north coast, and a fifth turns into a ferry trip to Tinos, Paros or Naxos.

What can you do in Mykonos in 1 day?

Walk Chora, see Panagia Paraportiani and the Kato Mili windmills, eat in a back street and stay for the sunset at Little Venice. That is the whole of Mykonos Town on foot in a day, and it is what cruise passengers do. Delos needs its own day and will not fit alongside it.

Can you get around Mykonos without a car?

Yes, the KTEL bus reaches Chora, the airport, both ports, Ano Mera and every organised beach on the south coast. A car or a quad is only needed for the north coast, Gyzi Castle and the beaches with no facilities, such as Fokos and Agios Sostis.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 5 tips below come from pricing this island properly for 2026 and from the details that decide whether a Mykonos day works or is wasted.

1. Ask what the minimum spend is before you take a sunbed. A beach club charges for the bed and then sets a separate food and drink minimum, which is what turns a day at a mid-tier club into roughly €80-150 a person. Front-row beds cost well above back-row ones at the flagship venues, so the row you accept matters as much as the club you choose.
2. Do not go to Psarou expecting a quiet beach. Nammos sits on it and sets the island’s price ceiling, whatever older guides say about honeymooners and quiet water. The beaches with genuinely nothing on them are Agios Sostis, which has no sunbeds, umbrellas or bar at all, and Fokos, which has one taverna, and both need a car or a scooter.
3. Check which of the two bus stations your beach leaves from. Fabrika at the top of Chora runs to the airport, the New Port and the south-coast beaches including Platys Gialos, Ornos and Paradise, while the Old Port station runs to Ano Mera, Kalafatis, Elia and Panormos. Turning up at the wrong one costs you a walk across town and a departure.
4. Never book a same-day ferry connection to a flight in August. The meltemi blows through July and August at 7 or 8 on the Beaufort scale and cancels sailings outright, so an island-hop that has to meet a plane needs a night’s slack in it.
5. Treat Delos as most of a day, and carry your own water. Boats leave the Old Port in the morning and return in the early afternoon, the site costs about €20 with the return boat about €25, and both run on a seasonal timetable worth checking first. There is no shade and nothing to buy on the island once you are there.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, who has travelled to Greece several times, mostly around the islands. The team covers the Cyclades for independent travellers, including the ferries, hire cars, villas, Delos boats and diving worth booking, and updates this page when prices, seasons and timetables change.