Greece > Sporades

Sporades

Sporades are an archipelago along the east coast of Greece, northeast of the island of Euboea, in the Aegean Sea. They consists of 24 islands, four of which are permanently inhabited: Alonnisos, Skiathos, Skopelos and Skyros. They may also be referred to as the Thessalian Sporades.

Etymology

"Sporades" means "those scattered" (compare with "sporadic"), and was used from Classical Antiquity to refer to the Aegean island groups outside the central archipelago of the Cyclades. In modern geographical parlance, there are five different Sporades groups:

• Thessalian Sporades (Θεσσαλικές Σποράδες) or Northern Sporades. Since ca. 1960, the term "Sporades" refers mainly to these islands:
  • Skopelos
  • Alonnisos
  • Skiathos
  • Kyra Panagia
  • Peristera
  • Gioura
  • Skantzoura
  • Piperi
  • Tsougria
• Thracian Sporades (Θρακικές Σποράδες): Thasos, Samothrace, Imbros, Lemnos and Agios Efstratios
• Western Sporades (Δυτικές Σποράδες): Salamis, Aigina, Poros, Hydra, Spetses, and the other islands of the Saronic Gulf and the Myrtoan Sea.
• Eastern Sporades (Ανατολικές Σποράδες), i.e. the islands of the eastern and northeastern Aegean, neighbouring the coast of Asia Minor : Samos, Ikaria, Lesbos, Chios, Tenedos, Psara, Oinousses and smaller island groups
• Southern Sporades (Νότιες Σποράδες), i.e. the Dodecanese, to which group Samos and Ikaria are sometimes appended.

Administration

As a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, the regional unit Sporades (Greek: Περιφερειακή ενότητα Σποράδων) was created out of part of the former Magnesia Prefecture, region of Thessaly. The regional unit is subdivided into 3 municipalities. These are:

• Skiathos (1)
• Skopelos (3)
• Alonnisos (2)

The island of Skyros with a few uninhabited islets of its area is part of the regional unit of Euboea and the administrative region of Central Greece.

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