Melissani Cave

Interesting facts

In 1963 Austrian geologists poured about 160 kilograms of dye into sinkholes near Argostoli; two weeks later it surfaced in Melissani on the other side of the island.

The experiment showed that seawater disappearing on the west coast travels some 15 kilometres underground through fissures in the limestone.

At the Argostoli swallow-holes where the journey begins, the sea flowing into the ground once powered a water mill.

The lake's water is brackish, a mixture of inland fresh water and seawater that has seeped in from below.

From the cave the water flows on underground and emerges at springs near Sami, including at Fridi beach and Karavomylos.

The lake is roughly 160 metres long, and its depth is reported at well over 20 metres in places.

In Greek tradition Melissani was known as the Cave of the Nymphs, fitting the discs with dancing nymphs later found on its islet.

Why it is worth it

The lake inside Melissani sits under a hole that wasn't always there. For most of its existence the cavern was fully enclosed, until the 1953 earthquake that devastated much of Kefalonia collapsed part of the ceiling and let daylight pour straight down onto the water, creating the shifting blue-and-turquoise light that defines the place today. Before that, the underground lake existed in the dark and wasn't even found by modern explorers until speleologist Giannis Petrohilos located it in 1951.

The name comes from a myth older than any of that geology: Melissanthi, a nymph in love with the god Pan, is said to have drowned herself in the lake when he didn't return her feelings — or, in a gentler local version, she was a shepherd girl who simply fell in while chasing a lost sheep. Excavations on the lake's small island in 1951 and 1962, led by archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos, gave the myth some real backing: clay figurines of Pan and ceremonial discs showing dancing nymphs turned up there, dated to the 4th–3rd century BC, when the cave functioned as an actual sanctuary rather than just a story.

None of that history is visible from the water's edge. The only way to see the lake today is by rowboat, guided across a cave that is at once a collapsed roof, an earthquake scar, and a shrine that operated for centuries before anyone wrote its myth down.

Good to know

The lake is reached only by boat; there is no path around it on foot.
Finds from the 1951 and 1962 excavations, including figurines of Pan, are now displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Argostoli.

Best time to visit

Around midday, when the sun sits more directly over the collapsed roof and lights the water most vividly.

Getting there

78 km from Préveza. Kefallinia Airport (EFL) is about 19 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

Melissani Cave or Melissani Lake, also Melisani is a cave and cenote located on the island of Kefalonia, northwest of Sami, about 5 km (3.1 mi) Southeast of Agia Effimia, Northeast of Argostoli and Northwest of Poros. This sinkhole was created when a collapse of limestone bedrock exposed groundwater in 1953, creating the cenote. The Ionian Sea lies to the east with the Strait of Ithaca. Forests surround the cave and the mountain slope is to the west. Near the cave is the entry to the cave with parking lots and is passed almost in the middle of the main road linking Sami and Agia Efimia especially to the northern part of the island. Some say the water is so clear the boats look like they are floating on air.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0