Ithaca

Ithaca has no airport. Most travellers arrive by ferry from Sami on Kefalonia, 20 minutes across the strait. That crossing is the right way to reach a place that entered Western literature on the strength of one homecoming. Ithaca is hard to justify as a trip on its own, but it works as an extension of two or three nights to a stay on Kefalonia, especially from the north.

The link to Homer is the reason most people come, and it is best taken lightly. Stavros, in the north of the island, has a small archaeological museum and the so-called School of Homer, a Mycenaean site that scholars argue may or may not connect to the palace of Odysseus. The Cave of the Nymphs above Vathy holds stalagmites and stalactites that match Homer’s description of the cave where Odysseus hid the gifts of the Phaeacians. The poet Constantine Cavafy’s poem Ithaka, written in 1911, is the more reliable companion. Read it on the ferry over.

Vathy, the capital, wraps around a deep natural harbour, so nearly enclosed that ferries seem to be entering a private lagoon. Pastel houses line the curve of the bay, and the water stays glassy even when there is wind out in the strait. There are a handful of restaurants serving plain fish, one bookshop, one ice-cream shop and no nightlife to speak of. Kioni, on the east coast, is the village most photographs come from: three abandoned windmills above its small harbour, on a hillside that runs straight down to the water.

Some practical advice. Hire a small boat in Vathy for one day; the swimming coves on the east coast can be reached only from the water. Frikes, between Vathy and Kioni, has the better lunch tavernas. Two nights within a week on Kefalonia is the right shape. Stay longer than three nights and it starts to feel like living in someone else’s life.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Ithaca has no airstrip of its own. The cleanest private arrival is a helicopter to Kefalonia airport (EFL), then 20 minutes by tender from Sami to Pisaetos, and the short road over the saddle to Vathy. The island is reached from Kefalonia or not easily at all, and that is much of its seclusion.

  2. The address

    Perantzada Hotel 1811 is an 1811 neoclassical mansion on the Vathy waterfront, extended with a modern wing in 2007. It now has 17 individually decorated rooms. The interiors carry work by Verner Panton, Tom Dixon and Ingo Maurer alongside Greek artists, and the pool terrace overlooks the bay. It is the most considered address on the island; the alternatives are private villas or a chartered yacht.

  3. Sirenes, Vathy

    Sirenes is the one kitchen on the island that rewards a reservation. Nikos Kostopoulos has run it since 1993 on Odos Niriidon, a block behind the Vathy waterfront, with a menu built on modern Greek technique and Ionian produce. The wood-panelled room is small, and the terrace seats go first. Walk-ins in August are unlikely to find a table.

  4. The Thiako oil

    Aetos Ithaki makes extra virgin olive oil from the Thiako variety, native to Ithaca’s Venetian-era groves. Its small estate lies on the slopes above Aetos, facing the Ionian. Every olive is picked by hand and cold-pressed in an organic-certified mill. Grove visits and tastings are available by arrangement, and oil can be ordered ahead and sent to the villa.

  5. The Loizos inscription

    Loizos Cave, at the north-west corner of Polis Bay near Stavros, was a cult site from Mycenaean times through the Roman period. Excavations in the 1930s found 13 bronze geometric tripods, a direct echo of the Phaeacian gifts in the Odyssey. They also found a clay mask inscribed ΕΥΧΗΝ ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙ, a prayer to Odysseus. The finds are in the Archaeological Collection of Northern Ithaca in Stavros, open Wednesday to Monday.

  6. Anogi

    Anogi, the oldest inhabited village on the island, sits at 550 metres on Mount Niritos, reached by a road that earns the altitude. The Church of the Dormition of the Virgin dates from the 12th century. Its frescoes, painted in the manner of Epirus with later Cretan influences, are among the most significant Byzantine paintings in the Ionian. Around the village stand limestone monoliths between 3 and 9 metres high; the tallest, at 9 metres, is called Araklis.

  7. Gidaki

    The finest swimming beach within reach of Vathy cannot be reached by road. Gidaki, white pebble and clear water, lies 2 kilometres north of the harbour. You reach it on foot by a path of 30 to 40 minutes from Skinos bay, or by water taxi from the Vathy quay. The boat runs from 11am; in July and August, confirm the day before, as places go quickly.

  8. Atokos, by RIB

    Atokos lies 9 kilometres north-east of Vathy. It is uninhabited, owned by the Tsakos shipping family and administered by the municipality of Ithaca. The destination is the sheltered anchorage at One House Bay on its eastern coast. Odyssey Boats, working from Vathy harbour since 2016, runs the trip as a skippered RIB (rigid inflatable boat) day, with two swim stops at Atokos before lunch at Kioni. Monk seals are occasionally seen in the surrounding waters.

  9. Kathara

    The Monastery of Panagia Kathariotissa, patron of Ithaca, sits at 556 metres on the south-eastern shoulder of Mount Niritos; its life began around 1696. From the bell tower the whole island falls away: Vathy and its enclosed bay, Perachori, the Echinades, Kefalonia and, on a clear day, Zakynthos beyond. The name comes from the icon found in the ash of burning kathara, the local word for dry brush. The drive up earns the altitude, so go for the late light.

  10. Perachori

    Perachori climbs the hillside 3 kilometres above Vathy, at around 300 metres. It is an amphitheatre of whitewashed courtyards looking down on the harbour, and out to Lefkada and Zakynthos from the high point at Agnantio. Within walking distance are the Taxiarches Monastery and the ruins of Paleochora, the medieval capital of Ithaca, abandoned in the 16th century once the pirate threat eased. Most of the island’s wine, oil and honey is made on these slopes.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Vathy

    Vathy, the capital, lies in a harbour at the south of the island. It is the largest settlement, the seat of the regional unit (the local administrative district) and Ithaca’s main port, where the Port Authority sits, and a yacht lies at the marina in the inner bay with the town around the water. The island built its ships and traded from here, and everything still arrives through this harbour.

  2. Kioni

    Kioni is on the northeast shore, a bay and village that has stayed relatively unspoiled: a traditional settlement under strict planning rules, its houses stepped around a small horseshoe harbour. A yacht lies in one of the small anchorages of the Ionian Sea, with the Nirito mountains behind. The harbour is kept deliberately quiet.

  3. Frikes

    Frikes is the small harbour of the north, set in its own bay a short drive west of Kioni, below the villages of the Stavros hills. A handful of tavernas line the quay, which the fishing boats and the summer day boats share. A yacht lies against the mole in a harbour smaller and plainer than Kioni, and quieter still out of season.

  4. Pisaetos

    Pisaetos lies on the west coast, facing Kefalonia across the strait. The ferries and the tenders from Sami come in here, and it is the simplest way onto the island for a guest crossing from a base on Kefalonia. It is a working ramp in a small bay under the hills, a place to arrive rather than to lie at anchor.

Mythology

  1. Circe

    Ithaca is where the story that grew around Circe after Homer comes to an end. Telegonus, her son by Odysseus, learns his father’s name from her and sails in search of him, then lands on Ithaca, drives off cattle, and kills Odysseus with a spear barbed with the spine of a stingray.

  2. Odysseus

    In the Odyssey, Odysseus names Ithaca as his own island, with the wooded mountain Neriton on it and Dulichium, Same and Zacynthus lying round it. The Phaeacians put him ashore asleep at the harbour of Phorcys, where a long-leafed olive stands at the head of the water beside a cave sacred to the Naiads, with one door for men and one, to the south, that only the immortals use.

  3. Penelope

    On Ithaca, Odysseus tells Penelope he built their bed himself around the rooted trunk of a living olive tree inside the courtyard wall, then raised the walls and roof of the bedroom around it, so the bed could never leave the house. After twenty years, when every other sign has failed, this is the proof that makes Penelope accept him.

  4. Phorcys

    On Ithaca, the Phaeacians carry the sleeping Odysseus into the harbour of Phorcys and lay him on the sand beside its olive tree and the cave of the Naiads. Athena later names the harbour when she shows him his homeland.

  5. Telemachus

    On Ithaca, Telemachus calls the first assembly since Odysseus sailed for Troy. After his journey he returns to the island, recognises his father at the swineherd’s farm and helps him plan against the suitors.

  6. The Cave of the Nymphs

    Homer places the Cave of the Nymphs at the head of the harbour of Phorcys on Ithaca, where the Phaeacians land Odysseus and Athena hides his gifts. Marmarospilia near Vathy has yielded Nymph figurines and dedicated vessels, but no one has proved it is Homer’s exact cave.

  7. The Odyssey

    The Odyssey makes Ithaca both the goal of Odysseus’s return and the ground on which that return is tested. In Book 13, Athena points out the harbour of Phorcys, an olive tree, the cave of the Naiads and wooded Neriton before Odysseus recognises the island and kisses the earth.

  8. The Return from Troy

    On Ithaca, the singer Phemius sings of the grievous homecoming of the Achaeans while Penelope and Telemachus still wait. Later the Phaeacians land Odysseus asleep at the harbour of Phorcys, which brings one branch of the homecoming stories to its end.