Sporades
The Sporades are an archipelago along the east coast of Greece, northeast of the island of Euboea, in the Aegean Sea. They consist 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". From Classical Antiquity the name has referred to the Aegean island groups outside the central archipelago of the Cyclades.Geography
In modern geographical parlance, there are five different Sporades groups:
- Thessalian Sporades or Northern Sporades. Since 1960, the term "Sporades" refers mainly to these islands:
- *Skopelos
- * Alonnisos
- * Skiathos
- * Skyros
- * Kyra Panagia
- * Peristera
- * Gioura
- * Skantzoura
- * Piperi
- * Tsougria
- Thracian Sporades : Thasos, Samothrace, Imbros, Lemnos and Agios Efstratios
- Western Sporades : Salamis, Aigina, Poros, Hydra, Spetses, and the other islands of the Saronic Gulf and the Myrtoan Sea.
- Eastern Sporades, i.e. the islands of the eastern and northeastern Aegean, near the coast of Asia Minor : Samos, Ikaria, Lesbos, Chios, Tenedos, Psara, Oinousses and smaller island groups
- Southern Sporades, i.e. the Dodecanese, to which group Samos and Ikaria are sometimes appended.
Administration
As a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, the Sporades Regional Unit was created out of part of the former Magnesia Prefecture, region of Thessaly. The regional unit is subdivided into 3 municipalities. These are:
- Skiathos
- Skopelos
- Alonnisos
The island of Skyros with a few uninhabited islets in its area are part of the Euboea regional unit and the administrative region of Central Greece.
