People have lived on Andros for six thousand years, and one of its ancient sites is important far beyond the island.

Zagora stands on a headland surrounded by cliffs, on the southwest coast. It was a town of the Early Iron Age, lived in from about 900 to 700 BC. Then it was abandoned, and nobody ever built on it again.

That is what makes it unusual. The houses fell down where they stood, with their contents still inside. This gives archaeologists a very complete picture of ordinary life in a period that left very little behind. Australian archaeologists have worked here since the 1960s, and only about a tenth of the site has been excavated. A defensive wall 110 metres long still crosses the neck of the headland.

To reach it you walk about half an hour each way from the chapel of Agia Triada, on a rough path.

An older site, Strofilas, lies on the same coast. It was a town of the Final Neolithic period, with ships carved into its walls. The excavation is important, but the site is not open to visitors.

Later, Palaiopoli became the ancient capital. A small museum survives there, above ruins that run down to a harbour now under the sea.

Inland from Gavrio, the Tower of Agios Petros still stands almost complete. It was built around 300 BC, and archaeologists think it was the fortified house of a local iron-mine owner.

Chora stands on a narrow peninsula between two beaches, and it does not look like other Cycladic capitals.

Some of the most successful shipping families in Greece came from Andros. Their money paid for marble-paved streets, large neoclassical houses, schools and a hospital.

At the end of the peninsula, a ruined Venetian castle sits on a rock in the sea. You reach it across an arched medieval bridge. Beyond it, the Tourlitis lighthouse rises directly out of the water on its own rock pinnacle. In Riva square a bronze figure of an unknown sailor faces the sea.

The town has four museums. One is a purpose-built museum of contemporary art, founded by the Goulandris family, which holds a major exhibition every summer. Another is the archaeological museum, where the finds from Zagora are displayed.

Villages inland

Stenies is the captains' village, full of tower houses and mansions above a ravine.

Menites has water running from marble lion-head spouts, under plane trees.

Apikia is where the island's bottled mineral water comes from, and you can fill a bottle at the spring itself.

High above them stands the Byzantine Monastery of Panachrantos, which looks across most of the island.

Andros keeps its water when the rest of the Cyclades runs dry. This one fact shapes everything: plane trees, running streams, hillsides held in place by dry-stone terraces, and more than two hundred old watermills standing empty beside the paths that once served them.

The Andros Route

Since 2012, a volunteer organisation has cleared and marked 240 kilometres of the old paths between villages.

Inside this network runs the Andros Route, a single trail 100 kilometres long that crosses the whole island. You can walk it in ten daily sections, sleeping in a different village each night. In 2015 it became the first island trail network in Europe to receive the Leading Quality Trails – Best of Europe certification from the European Ramblers' Association.

About twenty-nine shorter day walks branch off the main route. Volunteers still maintain the paths, and visitors can join the maintenance walks.

The best walks

The Dipotamata valley runs seven kilometres down to the sea, past watermills, arched bridges and old threshing floors.

Near Apikia, a short walk in the shade reaches the Pythara waterfalls and pools.

One long route drops from the ridge at Vourkoti, through an old monastery, down to Achla beach, which has no road.

Andros has more beaches than most visitors can get through, and they are very different on each coast.

The west coast, between Gavrio and Batsi, is the easy side. Agios Petros, Chrissi Ammos and Kypri are sandy and shallow, they have sunbeds and tavernas, and the bus goes to them. Batsi itself has the busiest beach on the island. The two beaches on either side of Chora — Nimborio and Paraporti — are a short walk from the town.

The north coast is the opposite. Zorkos is white pebble in a wide bay, and Vitali lies below bare hills; you reach both by dirt road. Achla, on the northeast coast, needs a car with high clearance, or the walk down from the ridge, and there is nothing at all when you arrive. Take food and water for any of these.

The most photographed place is Tis Grias to Pidima, near Ormos Korthiou. It is a pale beach with a tall rock pillar standing in the water just offshore. It has no facilities at all.

Andros grows much more of its own food than most Cycladic islands: citrus fruit, figs, almonds, onions, pork and dairy.

The dish that belongs to the island is froutalia, a thick omelette made with sliced potato, local sausage, herbs and pork fat. It is filling enough to be a whole meal, and you find it in village tavernas rather than seafront ones.

The sausages themselves are smoked and flavoured with anise and orange peel. Louza is cured pork loin, marinated in red wine and spices and sliced very thin as a starter.

Amygdalota are the island's best-known sweet: almond paste with rose water, covered thickly in icing sugar, sold in every bakery.

Kaltsounia on Andros are sweet pastries filled with nuts and honey — not the savoury Cretan kind with the same name.

Figs are dried and pressed into pastelaries, and citrus fruit is made into spoon sweets. The mineral water from Apikia is bottled and sold all over Greece.