“Looking for Leonard Cohen’s house?” we asked the couple stopped in front of us, phones in hand. They nodded. “Us too,” I said.

We were navigating the steep cobblestone lanes beyond Hydra’s harbour without much luck. It was time to team up and together, with help from a YouTube clip, we got there in the end.

We visited Hydra on a day trip in 2025 inspired by the television series So Long, Marianne, which told the story of Cohen’s Hydra years and his friendship with Australian writers George Johnston and Charmian Clift, who also lived on the island and wrote about it.

Cohen, the revered writer and singer who died in 2016, is the most famous of the artistic denizens of this Greek island known for its artist colony.

The harbour in all its glory. Photo: Phil Brown

This year we spent several days on Hydra and were determined to find Cohen’s house. Teaming up got us there and a German couple lingering by the nondescript doorway of a three-story, whitewashed stone house assured us we were in the right place. There’s no plaque or sign on the house itself, which is still owned by Cohen’s family, but the laneway is named Odos Leonard Cohen (Leonard Cohen Street) and there is a Leonard Cohen memorial bench overlooking the sea a short walk from the port.

The literary and artistic connections on Hydra are chronicled in the award-winning Australian book Half the Perfect World, by Paul Genomi and Tanya Dalziell. It’s a fascinating look at the creative denizens of Hydra in the 1950s and 1960s, with a focus on Cohen and his Aussie mates Johnston and Clift.

Cohen’s house isn’t easy to find, and isn’t marked. But there are signs of his life on Hydra. Photo: Phil Brown

It tells the story of how Cohen discovered Hydra – “a story peddled today by those selling the island as a desirable holiday destination” – after all, it is Cohen who went on to become the most famous of Hydra’s international residents. A casual conversation with a sun-tanned bank teller during a bleak London spring led him to take a plane to Athens and then a ferry to Hydra in mid-April 1960:

“Here, the legend met and lived with his partner Marianne Ihlen in idyllic simplicity throughout the 1960s as he wrote the novels and poems and crafted the songs that would earn him international renown.”

Their relationship didn’t last, evidenced by the song – So Long, Marianne – that gave the TV series its title. Life on Hydra wasn’t always idyllic, and the story of Johnston and Clift in particular turned out to be paradise lost in the end.

The history of Hydra runs deep. The artists and writers were relative latecomers, with the island having a rich past including buccaneers, wealthy traders, naval heroes and even a few Greek prime ministers.

The romantic lure of Hydra remained, and Hydra has been home to artists such as Chagall, the renowned Greek painters Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas and Panayiotis Tetsis and, among others, Sidney Nolan for a time. The renowned American artist Jeff Koons also spent time here unveiling his Apollo Wind Spinner (a massive, 9.1-metre-wide kinetic sculpture featuring the face of the Greek sun god Apollo) in 2022. It overlooks the Aegean Sea on the path to the nearby village of Mandraki.

The literary connections are many and varied, including Patrick Leigh Fermor, who is famous for his historical travelogues, and Henry Miller, whose book The Colossus of Maroussi is a great primer for Greece.

Then there’s Clift and Johnston, whose semi-autobiographical novel Clean Straw for Nothing, is partly set on Hydra.

What I hadn’t realised until our recent visit was that Tim Winton also spent six months on Hydra in 1988, busy writing his much-loved novel Cloudstreet while he was there. Hydra features prominently in Winton’s 1994 novel The Riders, which has a bleaker view of the place than the tourist brochures. Like Charmian Clift’s wonderful Hydra memoir Peel Me A Lotus, The Riders was set on Hydra out of season.

He describes his protagonist Scully returning to Hydra:

“Up behind the harbour the island rose into the sky, its houses packed into the space between mountain peaks whose slopes showed patches of green he had never seen. The terracotta tiles of a thousand Venetian roofs blurred sweetly in the sun, and from the hills came a showering of goat bells falling on the breeze.”

Brad Pitt is making and starring in a film of the Winton novel and a couple of months before us, he was filming on the island. It has featured in several movies including, perhaps most famously, in the 1957 Hollywood film Boy on a Dolphin, starring Sophia Loren and Alan Ladd. It was the first American production shot in Greece and this classic adventure romance firmly cemented Hydra’s cosmopolitan image on the global stage.

It’s such a picturesque spot with the town hugging the harbour, the rugged hills towering beyond. It’s one of the Saronic (or Argo-Saronic) Islands just an hour and a half by fast ferry from Athens’ Port of Piraeus, making it accessible for a day trip or longer.

It gets busy in summer, but we visited in early May before the hordes arrived.

The first thing you notice are the donkeys lined up by the quay. There are no cars on Hydra and that’s part of the charm. If your lodgings are a little too far to drag your bags, they will be strapped to a donkey and carried there for you, for a price.

Donkeys at the ready. Photo: Unsplash

We stayed at the Hotel Leto Hydra, a charming five-star lodging with just 21 rooms in an old Hydriot mansion five minutes from the waterfront.

The architecture is a mixture of Greek and Venetian, as Hydra was once a Venetian outpost like many places in Greece. Later it was part of the Ottoman Empire and it eventually played a central role in the Greek War of Independence in 1821.

Dealing with “pirates and corsairs” gave the seamen of Hydra “unrivalled military experience” as Thodoris Kiousis writes in his helpful guidebook to Hydra.

The island’s past glories are told in the fascinating Historical Archives Museum of Hydra on the waterfront, a must on any Hydra itinerary.

The town itself is charming and, yes, a bit touristy in parts. But hey, we are tourists. There are high-end boutiques jostling with souvenir shops and cafes that fringe the harbour.

Sitting there sipping coffee, nibbling loukoumades (Greek doughnut) and watching the passing parade of arrivals and the occasional superyacht edge its way in is fun.

There’s plenty to do on Hydra – poking around town wandering the laneways, coastal walks or treks into the hills for the more adventurous. Or just chill, like those ubiquitous cats lounging in the sun everywhere you go in Greece.

Just sitting on the little balcony of our hotel was enough for us in the afternoon, looking out over the Venetian rooftops that Winton wrote about, listening to the occasional peal of church bells and of donkeys braying as they traversed the narrow lanes of the town below. Bliss.

Soak in the sunset from a harbourside restaurant. Photo: Phil Brown

On Hydra, try

Sousami Bakery located on Kountouriotou 3 right in the heart of the island near the port, a go-to location for fresh bread, sandwiches, delicious Greek pastries, and excellent coffee.

Enjoy dinner in the quiet wisteria-covered courtyard at Xeri Elia Douskos, a charming family owned taverna in the middle of the town serving traditional fare, including the best Greek salad and moussaka to die for.

Enjoy the seafood and the view at Psaropoula Restaurant, with a view of the port. It serves fresh fish and the delicious dishes of Mrs Toula, who together with her son Georgios Mavrommatis is at the helm of the kitchen. Traditional Greek cuisine takes pride of place here.

From Sunset Restaurant a short stroll from the harbour front, watch the sun go down directly over the shores of the Peloponnese and the nearby island of Dokos. Try the sea bass.

Walk the car-free coastal trail past the fishing harbour of Kamini just 1.5 kilometres from the port. A little further on are the beaches of Vlyhos (you can cross the restored 19th-century stone bridge near here) and Plakes. Take one of the little ferries that run hourly from the various villages along the way back to the port.

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