🇬🇷 Greece · Ionian Islands
Kefalonia is the largest and perhaps the most varied of the Ionian Islands: a mountainous, green island where in a single day you can row across an underground lake lit by a shaft of sunlight, drop down to a beach of white pebbles and turquoise water wedged between cliffs, taste a robola wine in a valley at the foot of a fir-covered mountain and have fish for dinner in a Venetian harbour that survived an earthquake which flattened everything else. It does not have the instant fame of Santorini or Mykonos, and that is part of its charm.
The island carried two blows that marked its history and its landscape. In 1943, during the Second World War, it was the scene of the massacre of the Italian Acqui division by the German army, one of the most tragic episodes of the war in Greece, which years later inspired the novel and the film 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin', shot here. And in 1953 a devastating earthquake destroyed almost every building on the island, except those in the village of Fiskardo, at the northern tip: that is why Kefalonia has so little old architecture and its villages, apart from Fiskardo, are modern rebuilds.
This guide covers Kefalonia with a practical, warm eye: how to visit Melissani and Drogarati, when to go down to Myrtos, what to see in Assos and Fiskardo, how to climb Mount Ainos, where to taste robola and how to get around a large island with no trains where a car is all but compulsory. Kefalonia rewards the curious traveller with spectacular nature, intense history and the calm of an island that still feels genuine.
Inhabited since the Palaeolithic and mentioned by Homer (some place the kingdom of Odysseus here rather than on neighbouring Ithaca), Kefalonia had four city-states in antiquity and passed through Greek, Roman and Byzantine hands. As with the rest of the Ionians, its mark was left by Venice, which governed it from 1500 to 1797 and spared it the Ottoman rule that almost all of Greece suffered. After Napoleonic France, the Septinsular Republic and the British protectorate (1815–1864), it joined Greece in 1864. In September 1943, after Italy's capitulation, the Germans massacred thousands of soldiers of the Italian Acqui division who refused to surrender. On 12 August 1953 a devastating earthquake flattened almost the whole island, except Fiskardo: that is why hardly any old architecture is left. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The western islands that were never Ottoman: four centuries of Venetian rule, the short-lived Septinsular Republic, the British protectorate and union with Greece in 1864, marked by a singular Italian-Greek culture and by the 1953 earthquake that flattened Kefalonia and Zakynthos.
Read the history of Ionian Islands →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Kefalonia is an island carrying a question: some scholars argue that the kingdom of Odysseus, the Ithaca of the Odyssey, was not the small neighbouring island that bears the name today but the Paliki peninsula, on Kefalonia itself. The theory, defended among others by the researcher Robert Bittlestone, is not proven, but it gives a sense of the historical depth of a land inhabited since the Palaeolithic and already present in the Homeric poems, where the Cephallenians appear among the peoples who followed Odysseus to Troy.
In classical antiquity Kefalonia was notable for being divided into four independent city-states — Same (today's Sami), Krane, Pale and Pronnoi — each with its own acropolis and walls, remains of which still survive. That fragmentation into four poleis is unusual and speaks to the importance of the island, the largest in the Ionian. Like the rest of the Greek world, it took part in the wars between Athens and Sparta.
In the 2nd century BC it fell to Rome after hard resistance (the city of Same withstood a long siege), and later, with the partition of the Empire, it became part of the Byzantine world. For centuries it was frontier land, disputed and battered by Normans, pirates and assorted powers, until at the start of the modern era a new mistress of the sea left her definitive mark: Venice.
As with the rest of the Ionian Islands, here lies the key that sets Kefalonia apart from the rest of Greece. While almost the whole Greek world fell under the Ottoman Empire after 1453 and spent four centuries under Turkish rule, the seven Ionian islands took another course. Kefalonia, after a brief Ottoman period at the end of the 15th century, passed into the hands of the Republic of Venice in 1500 and stayed Venetian until 1797, almost three centuries. That difference shaped everything: the island did not live under the Ottoman yoke that defined the rest of the country.
Under Venice, Kefalonia was organised in the manner of the Serenissima, with its local nobility and its Golden Book, and developed an economy based on currants, olive oil and wine. In time the capital moved to Argostoli. The Venetian legacy remained in the dialect, in an architecture of bell towers and loggias (today almost all lost to earthquakes), in the social order and in a culture open to the Adriatic and to Italy. Kefalonians were great sailors and traders, and many emigrated and prospered across the Mediterranean.
After the fall of Venice in 1797, Kefalonia followed the common fate of the Ionians: Napoleon's revolutionary France, the short-lived Septinsular Republic (1800) under Russo-Ottoman protection — the first semi-independent Greek state of the modern era — and, after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the British protectorate under the name United States of the Ionian Islands. The British, during their half century of rule (1815–1864), built roads, bridges (the famous stone bridge over the Argostoli lagoon, the Drapano bridge, dates from this period) and lighthouses. In 1864 the Ionians finally joined the kingdom of Greece.
The most tragic episode in the modern history of Kefalonia happened in September 1943 and deserves to be told precisely and soberly, because it was a real war crime of enormous gravity. During the Second World War the island was occupied by Italian troops: the Acqui Division, with some 11,500 men under General Antonio Gandin, garrisoned Kefalonia alongside a smaller German contingent.
On 8 September 1943 Italy signed the armistice with the Allies and ceased to be an ally of Nazi Germany. In Kefalonia a desperate situation then arose: the Germans demanded that the Italians hand over their weapons and surrender. After days of tense negotiations and a consultation among the soldiers, the Acqui Division decided not to surrender and to resist. Between 15 and 22 September 1943 heavy fighting took place between Italians and Germans, who received air and ground reinforcements.
After the Italian surrender, the Germans systematically executed thousands of Italian prisoners of war, carrying out orders to take no prisoners. Historical estimates vary, but it is reckoned that around 5,000 soldiers of the Acqui Division were shot after laying down their arms, and several thousand more died in the fighting or drowned when the ships carrying them as prisoners sank after striking mines. In total, it is estimated that between 5,000 and 9,000 men perished. It was one of the largest massacres of prisoners of war in the entire conflict. Some islanders helped hide the few Italians who managed to escape. Today a monument in Argostoli commemorates the fallen of the Acqui Division, and the event is remembered in both Greece and Italy. This tragedy inspired, years later, the novel and the film 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin'.
Ten years after the war, nature dealt Kefalonia another shattering blow. On 12 August 1953 a series of earthquakes shook the southern Ionian Islands over several days. The main quake, of magnitude around 6.8–7.2, had its epicentre between Kefalonia and Zakynthos and was accompanied by an impressive geological phenomenon: it raised the whole island of Kefalonia by about 60 centimetres, permanently.
The destruction was almost total. Argostoli, the capital, was flattened, and practically every building on the island collapsed or was left uninhabitable. Only the village of Fiskardo, at the northern tip and farthest from the epicentre, came through almost intact: that is why today Fiskardo is the only place in Kefalonia that keeps its original Venetian architecture, while the rest of the island — villages, churches, bell towers, mansions — had to be rebuilt from scratch. That is the key to understanding why Kefalonia, for all its long history, shows so little old stone.
The human consequences were enormous. Many islanders lost everything, and a significant share of the population emigrated for good to Athens and above all abroad — Canada, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom — leaving the island and its economy in ruins for years. The rebuilding followed new earthquake-resistant rules and a functional, modern style, very different from the Venetian one that was lost. The same earthquake also devastated neighbouring Zakynthos, with which Kefalonia shares this story of catastrophe and reconstruction. Understanding 1953 is understanding the present face of the southern Ionians.
Rebuilt after the war and the earthquake, Kefalonia opened slowly to tourism in the following decades, leaning on its spectacular nature rather than on a monumental heritage that had disappeared. The Melissani cave lake, the Drogarati cavern, Myrtos beach, the villages of Assos and Fiskardo and Mount Ainos, with its endemic fir forest protected as a National Park since 1962, became its great draws.
The leap to international fame came through popular culture. In 1994 the British writer Louis de Bernières published the novel 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin', a love story set in Kefalonia during the Italian occupation and the tragedy of the Acqui Division. The book was a worldwide success, and its 2001 film adaptation, shot on the island itself with Hollywood stars, multiplied its fame and drew a new wave of visitors wanting to see the landscapes of the film. The island, however, has largely kept its genuine character and is less crowded than other Greek destinations.
Today Kefalonia combines nature and beach tourism with quality farming, led by its white robola wine, made from a native grape on the slopes of Ainos and protected by a designation of origin. Green, mountainous, marked by its tragic history and by earthquakes, the largest of the Ionians offers the traveller a mix that is hard to find: first-rate nature, intense historical memory, good food and the feeling of being on an island that still belongs to itself.