The Petralona Cave

At the foot of Mount Katsika, on the western side of Halkidiki, the Petralona Cave is one of the most important caves in Greece and the second most visited ancient monument in the north of the country.

In 1960 a group of amateur explorers found a human skull inside it. They removed it without recording where exactly it had lain, which has made it difficult to date ever since — estimates run between about 250,000 and 300,000 years.

Its importance is not only its age. It is the oldest human remain found anywhere in Greece, and it came out of the ground complete, which makes it one of the most useful cranial fossils in the European record. Stone tools and a great deal of fossil animal bone came from the same cave.

The cave also has an extensive display of stalactites and stalagmites.

It reopened on 28 February 2024 after five years closed for restoration, and the museum beside it followed in August of the same year.

Stagira

On the Liotopi peninsula, just outside the village of Olympiada, stand the remains of ancient Stagira.

The city was founded in the seventh century BC by colonists from the island of Andros. In 384 BC Aristotle was born here, and he later taught Alexander the Great nearby.

Systematic excavation ran from 1990 to 2000, and the site has been partly restored: sections of the city wall, a circular tower and a large square tower. It sits on a headland with the sea on both sides, and a coastal path runs round it. Allow two to three hours if you want to see all of it.

Olynthos and the museum

Olynthos, on the mainland, was destroyed by Philip II in 348 BC and never rebuilt, which is why its street plan survives so clearly. It is one of the best surviving examples of the grid system of Greek town planning, and several houses keep their pebble mosaic floors.

The Archaeological Museum of Polygyros, in the regional capital, holds the finds from across Halkidiki.

Mount Athos

The eastern peninsula has been a self-governing monastic community for over a thousand years, with twenty monasteries and a population of monks.

Access is by permit only, and only for men. Everyone else sees it from the sea: boats leave from Ouranoupoli and run along the coast, close enough to see the monasteries on the cliffs.

Polygyros, inland, is the administrative capital and has the archaeological museum. Nea Moudania is the largest coastal town, with a working market and a marina.

Afitos, on the east coast of Kassandra, is the village people are sent to: stone houses on a low cliff, with a view across to Sithonia.

Ouranoupoli is the last settlement before the border of Mount Athos, and the boats to the peninsula leave from there. A Byzantine tower stands on its waterfront.

Olympiada, on the northeast coast, is a quiet fishing village beside the site of ancient Stagira.

Ammouliani, off the coast near Ouranoupoli, is the only inhabited island in northern Greece, twenty minutes by ferry.

Sithonia is the green finger. Pine forest covers most of it and comes down to the water in the coves along the east coast, and the road round the peninsula is one of the better coastal drives in northern Greece.

Inland, the Holomontas range is oak and chestnut forest with walking routes through it, and it stays cool when the coast is at its hottest.

At Agia Paraskevi, on the east side of Kassandra, there are natural hot springs, used since antiquity and now with a spa built around them.

The Varvara waterfalls, inland in the north, fall through woodland and are a short walk from the road.

This is what Halkidiki is for. The peninsula has more good beaches than any comparable stretch of the Greek mainland, and they are sandy almost everywhere.

On Sithonia, Kavourotripes is a chain of small sand coves between smooth pale rocks, and it is the one that appears on postcards. Karydi has soft sand and shallow turquoise water. Armenistis is long and sandy with a well-known campsite behind it, and Toroni runs for kilometres with organised and free sections.

On Kassandra, Sani is fully organised with watersports, Kalogria is shallow and easy with children, and Possidi runs out to a long sand spit at the end of the peninsula.

Around Ouranoupoli and Ammouliani the water is calmer and the beaches quieter.

Nightlife is a genuine reason people choose Kassandra. The bars and clubs around Kallithea and Chaniotis run through the night in July and August, and the crowd is largely Greek and Balkan.

Golf: an eighteen-hole course sits in a resort on Sithonia, looking over the Aegean — one of very few full courses in northern Greece.

Diving centres work along both peninsulas, on reefs and drop-offs with good visibility.

Sailing is well served: there are marinas on Sithonia and Kassandra, and the three gulfs between the fingers give sheltered water.

The green olive of Halkidiki is the region's product — large, firm, cracked or stuffed, and grown across the mainland part of the peninsula. The olive oil goes with it.

Fresh fish and seafood are the everyday food along the coast, and the mainland villages cook meat, pies and greens.

Halkidiki also has a serious restaurant scene. Four restaurants here hold Golden Caps in the 2026 national gastronomy awards — more than any region in Greece outside Athens, Santorini and Mykonos.

Local wine is made on Sithonia and in the mainland vineyards, and tsipouro is drunk everywhere.