DO YOU WISH you could live out the Mamma Mia dream on a remote island, away from cars, pollution and social media?
Well, in Greece you can, as one island is offering to pay people to move there.
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Antikythera is a small, eight-square-mile island found between Crete and the Peloponnese and is home to only 24 permanent residents.
One recent visitor even described it as “a small, peaceful planet that moves at its own unique pace”.
And the local church is inviting people to move to the island.
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Not only will those who move there be paid €500 (£433.49) a month for three years, they will also be given a newly built house to live in.
Of course, there are a couple of catches including that you must be a family with four children and you must have a skill or work in trade, such as fishing.
This is because the scheme is aiming to grow the island’s population as well as its economy.
To apply, you will need to contact the local council.
As for life on the island, it couldn’t be further from other tourist hotspots in Greece.
The entire island remains untouched and boasts natural, rugged beaches and to get to it, you’ll have to hop on a two-hour ferry from Kythera.
Once you reach the island’s port, you’ll see white houses and chapels, as well as a statue dedicated to a diver who discovered a bronze man, underwater, just off of the island.
The statue is believed to date back to between the first and second centuries and one of the divers mistook it for a heap of rotten corpses.
Today, you can see the statue in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.
While there isn’t much to do on the island, as you’d expect with Greece it does boast beautiful beaches.
One beach found near the port is Paralia Potamos Beach, which according to local reports, is about 80metres long, with pebbles and clear water.
A recent visitor commented: “Peaceful beach on a peaceful, charming little island.”
Another beach you can head to on the island is Xiropotamos, which is about a 20-minute walk from the port and is bigger than Paralia Potamos.
Across the rest of the island you’ll find ancient ruins, with the Greek Ministry of Culture often carrying out excavations on the island.
There’s also a number of small chapels and ruined windmills and just off its coast there’s a shipwreck that dates to around 82BC where parts of a mechanism thought to be the world’s first computer were found.
If you get hungry, there’s only one place to eat on the island – Strato’s Corner – which is run by one of the locals and sells typical Greek dishes as well as local goat and fish caught off of the island.
When it comes to shopping, the island has only one food store which doubles as a coffee shop, where you’ll often find the locals hanging out.
If you don’t fancy living on the island but do want to visit, there is a small hostel as well with 15 rooms.
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And if you do travel to the island, make sure to head there on August 17 when the island celebrates its patron saint – Saint Myron.
The celebrations bring about 1,000 people to the island, where they enjoy a festival.
In addition to the ferry from Kythera, there is also a small airport in Kythera with flights to Athens, which take about an hour each way.
Or you can also catch a boat trip from the island to Crete or Athens, though these services are less regular.
For more inspiration on Greek holidays, here are our top five Greek islands with white-washed houses and pretty beaches as Emily in Paris heads to Greece.
Plus, forget Mykonos and Santorini – TUI says these four less-popular Greek islands are set to be huge in 2026.