Armenistis lighthouse above the northern cliffs

Armenistis was built in 1891 on the headland closing Mykonos to the north, after a British steamer went down in the strait. The tower is grey stone rather than the island's usual whitewash, set in a walled yard on bare, wind-combed ground, with the channel to Tinos filling the horizon and the coastline running away in cliffs on both sides.

It is the one genuinely wild frame within ten minutes of Mykonos Town. Everything in the Chora is white, dense and busy; here the elements are cliff, dry-stone wall, one tower and a very large sky, and a couple gets scale instead of decoration. Spring covers the slope in green and yellow, August burns it to gold — the same composition looks like two different islands.

Sunset is the reason to come: the sun drops over the sea west of the cape and the stone takes a warm side-light while the water behind stays cold blue. The catch is the wind. The Meltemi blows hardest across exactly this headland in July and August — magnificent for a dress and hair in motion, hopeless for a veil, a hat or a light reflector. On a still evening in June or September it is simply one of the best-lit places on the island.

Practical: the compound is fenced and generally closed, so frames are made from the open ground outside it, which is where the cliff and the sea come into the picture anyway. The final stretch of road is rough but manageable in a normal car, there is no shade and no café, and it gets cold quickly after sundown — bring a layer.