Serifos is a small island (65 sq. km, pop. about 1,100) where tourism is just beginning to really develop. Its main attractions are some excellent beaches, and an unspoiled whitewashed cubistic traditional Cycladic '''Hora''' (main town). By far the most notable episode in the island's past is not from history but from mythology: here was where the hero Perseus was said to have used the Gorgon's head to turn King Polydeuctes to stone, thus saving his mother Danae from the king's violent advances. Copper and other minerals have been mined here since Minoan times and only stopped being exported in the 1960s; in some places on the island you can still see the straight roads with railway-like iron tracks which were used for animal-hauled ore carts. Serifos was a significant city-stae in classical Greece and played a part in the Persian and subsequent wars. The Romans used it as a place of political exile. In subsequent history, Serifos has been pretty much a backwater. The island is more barren than even most of the Cyclades, despite the fact that it well watered by natural springs.Though small, Serifos has most of the services a traveler requires, including hotels and restaurants and at least one bank and grocery store. A cafe in an enclosed courtyard just behind the middle of the seaside road has internet service for a fee. http://wikitravel.org/en/Serifos