Agia Anna anchors a string of settlements along this stretch of Evvia - Agkali, Fragkaki, Achladi, Kerasia, Papades - each with its own character but bound together by the same long shoreline. The main village sits a little inland, with the seaside at Agkali below; in between, a sweep of sand unrolls for kilometers. Camping is the local specialty, and Greece has few better places for it: pitch a tent within earshot of the surf, wake to the smell of pine and salt, and spend the day moving between water and shade. The area has filled in over the years with apartments, hotels, and holiday houses, but the beach is long enough to absorb the crowds and still leave you a quiet stretch of your own.

The traveler who scratches the surface here finds far older stories. People have lived along this coast since prehistoric times, and the Saint Basil peninsula in particular has yielded finds pointing to settlement in the classical era. It is easy to see why the ancients chose it. The headland is a natural observatory over the Aegean, with views reaching across to the Sporades, out to the island of Skyros, and down toward the Cape of Kymi. To stand where classical Greeks once stood, watching the same islands surface from the same haze, is to feel the long continuity of this shore - holidaymakers today occupying ground that has drawn people for thousands of years.

Half the pleasure of Agia Anna is what you stumble onto. Near the center of the beach stand the remains of a tower, probably Venetian - a relic of the centuries when Italian powers fortified these coasts against pirates and rivals. And at the southern end of Agkali beach, near a spot called Krya Vrysi, a section of old fortification lies half-hidden in the scrub, waiting for the curious walker to find it. These are not signposted monuments behind ropes; they are fragments of the past tangled in the present, the kind of discovery that makes a beach feel like more than a beach. Wander with your eyes open and the coast keeps handing you history.

Agia Anna sits in the green, mountainous north of Evvia, 12 kilometers northeast of the town of Limni and 47 kilometers north of Chalkida, the island's main gateway and the point where Evvia all but touches the mainland. This is the wilder, less-trodden end of an island that most visitors to Greece overlook entirely, which is precisely its appeal. The drive in winds through forest and down to the sea; the reward is a long beach, a string of easygoing villages, and a horizon worth lingering over. Stay for the camping, the swimming, and the slow days - and keep half an eye out for the ruins, because here the past is never far from the towel line.