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Modern Description: Donousa lies separated from the other Lesser Cyclades to the north, in an isolated position 15km from the east coast of Naxos: the next landfall to the east is Patmos (50km) or, to the northeast, Ikaria (45km) across open seas. It is a mountainous island for its small size, delightful and peaceful to visit, with a number of fine sandy bays and depths of turquoise water around its shores. The island has three good springs, and early in the year it is remarkably green. Aeneas speeds by Donousa after leaving Delos at the start of his voyage from Troy to Italy, and Virgil refers to the island as ‘green': (‘Bacchatamque iugis Naxon viridemque Donusa/… legimus', Aeneid III, 125). To anyone other than a poet, Donousa impinged on the Roman consciousness merely as a place of exile.
The Chora is well-kept with plenty of flowering shrubs and trees; there have not been dislocated rashes of building on the island, and outside the port area there is a just mixture of old and new buildings scattered in the landscape. The majority of the island is wild and scrubcovered.
Wikidata ID: Q991283

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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