Sporades

"Sporades" means "those scattered" (compare with "sporadic"), and was used from Classical Antiquity to refer to the Aegean island groups outside the central archipelago of the Cyclades. In modern geographical parlance, there are five different Sporades groups:

• Thracian Sporades (Θρακικές Σποράδες): Thasos, Samothrace, Imbros, Lemnos and Agios Efstratios
• Thessalian Sporades (Θεσσαλικές Σποράδες) or Northern Sporades. Since ca. 1960, the term "Sporades" refers mainly to these islands.
• Western Sporades (Δυτικές Σποράδες): Salamis, Aigina, Poros, Hydra, Spetses, and the other islands of the Saronic Gulf and the Myrtoan Sea.
• Eastern Sporades (Ανατολικές Σποράδες), i.e. the islands of the eastern and northeastern Aegean, partially overlapping with the Thracian Sporades: Samos, Ikaria, Lesbos, Chios, Lemnos, Agios Efstratios, Imbros, Tenedos, Psara, Oinousses and smaller island groups
• Southern Sporades (Νότιες Σποράδες), i.e. the Dodecanese, to which group Samos and Ikaria are sometimes appended.

Shortly after independence were characterized North Sporades all northern islands of the Cyclades, of the then newly established Kingdom and South Sporades the western islands of the Cyclades. After the annexation and the other Aegean islands were set all the above determinations of the Sporades. At times even the Dodecanese ware Southern Sporades. Eventually and after the 1960 the term was limited only to current Sporades islands qnd the othes islands was identified as North Aegean Islands, Eastern Aegean Islands and Gulf Islands.

Today Sporades consist of several islands, and other larger smaller. The four most important are: Skyros, Skiathos, Skopelos and Alonissos. From Skyros belongs to the Prefecture of Euboea, while the rest (along with all the other smaller islands) belong to the Prefecture of Magnesia and is known as the North Sporades.

Characteristic of these islands are beautiful beaches with the lush vegetation that reaches the coast, unlike most other islands.