Agios Kirikos is the capital and one of the two ports of Ikaria. It is located opposite the islands of Thymena and Fourni. The small town is built on the southeastern foothills of Mount Atheras. Ikaria is known for its numerous thermal springs, which are mainly located on the southeastern and northeastern coasts of the island –in Agios Kirykos, Therma, Lefkada, Xylosirti, Agia Kyriaki and Armyrida. Within Agios Kirikos itself lies the Asclepius Hydrotherapy Centre (Mustafa-Litsa springs). A little further east, in Therma, you will find the springs Spilia, Apollo, and Kratsa. The thermal springs of Ikaria have been renowned since ancient times. East of the present-day town are the ruins of the ancient spa town of Thermae. These baths remained in use during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. After the liberation of Ikaria in 1912, efforts began to harness the island’s thermal resources for tourism. From the 1920s onward, many accommodations were built near the springs to host visitors from Greece and abroad.

However, the island’s prosperity was interrupted by WWII, during which Ikaria suffered significant losses under German and Italian occupation. Ikaria has historically served as a place of exile –first during the Byzantine era, and later under the regime of Ioannis Metaxas (1871-1941) in the 1930s –a socio-cultural and political dynamic between the exiles and the local community, vividly described by Dilys Powell (1901-1995) in her remarkable 1941 book Remember Greece. After the war, the island hosted approximately 13,000 political prisoners between 1945 and the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949. Many of these exiles contributed to the island’s development by participating in the organised exploitation of its natural resources.