Alyko is the strangest and most compelling stretch of Naxos's southern coast. The area takes its name from the Greek for salt cedar — the aromatic coastal trees that form an actual forest here, unusual enough in the Cyclades to feel almost hallucinatory. Between and behind the trees, a series of sandy beaches curve along the coast, most of them barely developed: a few paths, some driftwood, the occasional windblown sign. The swimming is excellent and the landscape is unlike anything else on the island.
In the middle of this cedar grove stands the skeleton of a large hotel complex, begun in the 1970s, abandoned before completion, and left to be colonised slowly by graffiti artists, squatters, and the elements. The structure is concrete modernist — grand ambitions visible in the sweep of the terraces and the size of the intended pool area — now entirely open to the sky and covered floor-to-ceiling with murals, tags, and intricate painted work that has accumulated over decades. It has become, entirely without official sanction, one of the more interesting outdoor art spaces in Greece.
The juxtaposition is genuinely arresting: wild beach and cedar forest on one side, ruined brutalist hotel coated in art on the other, all of it accessible and unmanaged. People swim, people explore the ruins, people photograph the murals, and the place accommodates all of it without strain. This is not a curated attraction — it just exists. Treat the building with appropriate caution (floors and ceilings are in varying states of repair) and don't go inside in strong winds.
Alyko is reached by the road south from Agios Prokopios and Plaka. It's a 20-minute drive from Hora, longer if you stop at the beaches along the way, which you should.