Greece in April

Greece’s largest island is almost a country of its own: Minoan palaces at Knossos and Phaistos, Venetian harbours in Chania and Rethymno, gorges in the White Mountains and lagoon beaches like Balos and Elafonisi. Plan for distance, and for more than a week.

Rhodes pairs a walled medieval town built by the Knights of St John with Lindos, a sheltered sandy east coast and a wild, windy west. Big, easy to reach and good in the shoulder seasons, it rewards travellers who rent a car.

Nafplio is the Peloponnese’s most graceful harbour town: Venetian fortresses, marble lanes and seafront tavernas, within an easy drive of Mycenae, Tiryns and the theatre at Epidaurus. Base here for ancient sites by day and the waterfront by night.

Athens pairs the Acropolis and some of the world’s great museums with a working, late-night city and a coastline of beaches and coves running south to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion. It is also where most Greek island trips begin.

Meteora and Delphi are mainland Greece at its most dramatic: Byzantine monasteries on sandstone pillars above Kalambaka, and Apollo's sanctuary on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Two World Heritage sites that pair well on a road trip from Athens or Thessaloniki.

Syros is the administrative capital of the Cyclades and the one island that does not close for winter: a neoclassical port city with an opera house, a Catholic medieval town on the hill above it, and beaches that belong to the people who live here.