The Mediterranean has been drawing people to its islands for three thousand years. The Romans built villas on Capri. The Venetians fortified Corfu. The Phoenicians traded through Malta. The layers of history on these islands are unlike anywhere else — a ruined temple on a hill above a beach bar, a Byzantine fresco inside a cave that doubles as a swimming hole. The Mediterranean island experience is not just about the water; it is about everything that has accumulated around the water over millennia.
Sicily, Italy
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Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and the most complex. It has been ruled by the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, the Spanish, and the Italians — each leaving architecture, food traditions, and place names. The street food in Palermo — arancini, panelle, sfincione — reflects the Arab influence more than any other Italian cuisine. Mount Etna is the highest active volcano in Europe and hike-able from Catania. The Valley of the Temples at Agrigento is the best-preserved Greek archaeological site outside of Greece itself. Sicily is not a beach destination that also has culture; it is a culture destination that also has beaches.
Mallorca, Spain
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Mallorca has a reputation built on package tourism and beach resorts, and the southeast coast around Palma earns it. The northwest is a different island entirely: the Serra de Tramuntana mountains drop to the sea in limestone cliffs, the road from Sóller to Deià winds through one of the most beautiful coastal landscapes in Europe, and the village of Valldemossa has the monastery where Chopin spent a winter that inspired some of his most famous compositions. The hiking in the Tramuntana — a UNESCO World Heritage landscape — is excellent and almost entirely ignored by the island’s beach visitors.
Malta
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Malta is tiny — 27 kilometres long — and impossibly dense with history. Valletta, the capital, has more UNESCO-listed buildings per square metre than any other city in Europe. The megalithic temples at Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra are older than Stonehenge. The Blue Lagoon on the island of Comino is the clearest water in the Mediterranean. The fortified city of Mdina has been continuously inhabited for four thousand years. Malta works well as a base for exploring the surrounding islands of Gozo and Comino, both accessible by ferry within 30 minutes.
Corsica, France
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Corsica is geographically closer to Italy than to France but politically French, and the tension between those identities defines the island’s character. The GR20 — a 180-kilometre traverse of the island’s mountainous spine — is considered the hardest long-distance hiking trail in Europe. The beaches at Palombaggia and Rondinara in the south are among the finest in the Mediterranean. The interior has Genoese towers on every hilltop, chestnut forests that supply the island’s distinctive flour, and maquis scrubland that smells of rosemary, lavender, and wild thyme on warm afternoons.
