Ionian Islands

Interesting facts

A quarrel between Corfu, then called Corcyra, and its mother city Corinth in 434 BC drew in Athens and helped spark the Peloponnesian War.

According to myth, the Ionian Sea is named after Io, who swam across it; it is unrelated to Ionia in Anatolia, which Greek spells with a different letter.

Venetian rule left names that lingered for centuries: Zakynthos was Zante, Lefkada was Santa Maura and Kythira was Cerigo.

The Septinsular Republic of 1800 to 1807, under Russian and Ottoman protection, was the first Greek self-government of any kind since the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

From 1815 the islands were a British protectorate called the United States of the Ionian Islands, and islanders took up afternoon tea and cricket.

Britain handed the islands to Greece in 1864 partly as a gesture to boost the popularity of the newly chosen King George I.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born on Corfu in 1921 as Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark.

After the magnitude 7.2 earthquake of 1953, Kefalonia and Zakynthos were rebuilt under a strict building code, and many later quakes have left new buildings undamaged.

Gerald Durrell's memoir My Family and Other Animals recounts his 1930s childhood on Corfu, while Captain Corelli's Mandolin is set on wartime Kefalonia.

Although counted among the traditional seven, Kythira is administered as part of the Attica region rather than the Ionian Islands region.

Why it is worth it

Strung along the western coast of Greece, the Ionian Islands are the green counterpart to the bare Aegean: limestone mountains wooded with cypress, olive and fir, falling into a sea that shifts from deep blue to milky turquoise over pale pebble and marble. Tradition counts seven principal islands, the Heptanese — Corfu, Paxos, Lefkada, Ithaca, Kefalonia, Zakynthos and, off the tip of the Peloponnese, Kythira — but the group includes many smaller islets as well. Their character owes as much to history as to geology. Venice took Corfu in the early 13th century and the rest piece by piece, and the islands became the only Greek-speaking land never to fall under Ottoman rule. French, Russian-Ottoman and British administrations followed, until the islands joined the Greek state in 1864.

That layering is easiest to read in Corfu Town, whose Old Town was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007: a Venetian citadel cut off from the town by a sea-filled moat, narrow paved lanes called kantounia, and a broad esplanade between fortress and houses. The landscape set pieces lie further south. On Lefkada, Porto Katsiki sits at the foot of a concave pale cliff on the west coast; its name, "goat port", is said to recall a time when only goats could reach it. On Kefalonia, Myrtos is a long arc of white marble cobbles between the mountains of Agia Dynati and Kalon Oros, where waves grind the stone fine enough to tint the water turquoise. Above it rises Mount Ainos, at 1,628 m the island's summit, covered in the Greek fir that bears Kefalonia's name.

Zakynthos, which the Venetians nicknamed Fiore di Levante, ends in a western shore of cliffs, arches and sea caves running from Keri to Cape Skinari. Navagio, a cove walled in by those cliffs and reachable only by boat, holds the rusting coaster Panagiotis, which ran aground there in October 1980. Ithaca, finally, carries the name of Odysseus's home in Homer's Odyssey, though whether the modern island is the poet's Ithaca is still debated. The 1953 earthquake levelled most of Kefalonia and Zakynthos, so much of what stands there today was rebuilt afterwards.

Getting there

The islands have no single gateway. Zakynthos International Airport (ZTH) lies about 4 km from Zakynthos town, Kefalonia Island International Airport (EFL) about 10 km south of Argostoli, and Corfu International Airport (CFU) about 2 km south of Corfu Town; Lefkada, joined to the mainland by a causeway and floating bridge, is reached from Aktion National Airport (PVK) near Preveza. By sea, ferries link Zakynthos and Poros on Kefalonia with the mainland port of Kyllini, Sami on Kefalonia with Patras, and Corfu with Igoumenitsa.

Ionian Islands

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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