Lefkada

Lefkada is the only Ionian island you can drive onto. A floating bridge runs from the mainland at Aktion, past the airport, and you are on the island in five minutes without booking a ferry. That changes who comes here. Many Greek visitors arrive by car for a long weekend, and the rhythm is closer to a mainland holiday than to the slower pace of Paxos or Ithaca.

Most visitors come for the west coast. Porto Katsiki, halfway down the western side, is the postcard beach of the Ionian: a long stretch of white shingle under a sheer chalk cliff, reached by a flight of steps cut into the rock. Egremni, to the north of it, was badly damaged in the 2015 earthquake, restored, and later damaged again in winter storms. Check access before you drive down. In calmer weather, boats from Vasiliki and Nidri reach both beaches.

Cape Lefkatas, at the southern end, is where the poet Sappho is said to have leapt to her death in the seventh century BC. The Venetians fortified it, and their castle of Santa Maura at the northern entrance gave the island its medieval name. The inland villages on the slopes of Mount Stavrota remain olive-and-sheep country, largely untouched by the traffic on the coast. Englouvi is worth the drive for its lentils.

Vasiliki, on the south coast, has reliable afternoon thermal winds from May to September. They are gentle enough that beginners stand up on their second day. Off the east coast around Nidri lie small forested islands, among them Skorpios. Aristotle Onassis bought it in 1963, and it was the site of his 1968 wedding to Jacqueline Kennedy. It is now in other private hands. You cannot land, but boats from Nidri circle close enough to see the cypresses he had planted.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Private jets land at Aktion National Airport (PVK), run by Fraport Greece, 25 minutes across the causeway from Lefkada Town; Lefkada is the one Ionian island reached by road. Ariston and Helistar both fly the helicopter route from Athens to Preveza, which is a short drive from the bridge.

  2. The kitchens

    Frini sto Molo stands on the east pier at 12 Dimitri Golemi Street in Lefkada Town, open all year, with fresh pasta with octopus, cuttlefish, cheese rolls with local honey, and ouzo. Sapfo at Agios Nikitas sits on the beachfront lane, the only table with the harbour in front and the cliff behind, and its fresh fish comes in on the Meganisi boats.

  3. Lefkaditiki Gi

    Lefkaditiki Gi is the island’s considered winery, founded in 2000 by Dimitris Rombotis at the 8th kilometre of the road from Nydri to Vasiliki, above Sivota. Its Vertzami and Vardea grapes are indigenous to Lefkada alone, found nowhere else in Greece; the dry red Vertzami ages 8 to 12 months in barrel, and the Melidonos sweet wine blends Vertzami and Patrino. All the wines carry Protected Geographical Indication for Lefkada, the European label for a place of origin.

  4. The salami of Lefkada

    The Polychronopoulos family have made air-dried salami in Fysses since 1950, to a recipe of Venetian origin that reached the island during the Venetian occupation, and it is one of Greece’s earliest regionally branded foods. The salami is small, 250 to 300 grams and bound with rope, cured with garlic and whole peppercorns and left to ripen without preservatives.

  5. The Hearn Center

    The Lafcadio Hearn Historical Center on Sikelianou Street, inside the Cultural Centre of the Municipality, opened on 4 July 2014 as the first museum in Europe dedicated to Hearn, who was born in Lefkada in 1850 and later took Japanese nationality as Koizumi Yakumo. It holds early editions, rare books, Japanese collectibles and audiovisual material given by the municipalities of Kumamoto, Matsue and Shinjuku. Entry is free, Monday to Friday, 9am to 2pm.

  6. The Faneromeni

    The Faneromeni Monastery, 3 kilometres west of Lefkada Town, is the oldest and largest on the island: the bishop Agatharchos and two fathers built the first cells here in 332 AD, on a hill that takes in the town, the lagoon and the mainland coast in one view. The central church was raised in 1734 under the Venetians and rebuilt after the fire of 1886, and the icon of the Virgin, called Manifested, is the one to ask the monks to see.

  7. The Englouvi lentil

    The lentil of Englouvi grows on the mountain plateau above the village at around 900 metres, the highest cultivation on Lefkada. Small, dark and irregular, and genetically distinct from any commercial variety, it is weeded and harvested by hand, without irrigation or chemicals, and Theodosios Steriotis is one of the few who still grows it. A sample is kept in the ICARDA dry-areas seed bank under the code ILL293, and the practice is on Greece’s register of intangible cultural heritage.

  8. Odysseia

    Captain Gerasimos has run the Odysseia, a replica ancient galeon with a 45-square-metre sail, from Nidri harbour for over 40 years. The daily cruise leaves at 9am and returns at 5pm, calling at the Cave of Papanikolis on Meganisi (an entrance 60 metres wide and 120 metres deep, a submarine refuge in the Second World War), the 300-year-old church at Spartohori, Klimaki Bay and Skorpios. The boat is also available for private charter.

  9. Madouri

    The small forested island 700 metres off Nidri has been Valaoritis family land since 1853, when the poet Aristotle Valaoritis moved his household there; Nanos Valaoritis, the poet’s great-grandchild, holds it now. The stone villa, built from 1859 to 1864, and the Gothic chapel of Agios Ioannis Prodromos stand in the trees above the waterline, and Billy Wilder filmed Fedora here in 1978. Landing needs the family’s permission, but boats from Nidri pass close.

  10. The window

    The best weeks run from mid-May to late June, and through September. In July and August the island’s road access draws Greek visitors, the west-coast beaches are at their busiest and the Ionian thermals peak: a westerly that builds through the afternoon, good for the windsurfers at Vasiliki but harder on long swims at Porto Katsiki and Kathisma.

Anchorage Notes

  1. D-Marin Lefkas

    D-Marin Lefkas is the island’s marina, a few minutes from the old town across the causeway. It has 620 berths for vessels up to 45 metres, water, power and fuel around the clock, a technical yard and a 20,000-square-metre dry dock served by two travel lifts, the cranes that lift a boat out of the water. A Lefkada charter is based here, with the town’s cafés a short walk from the pontoons.

  2. Nydri

    Nydri, on the east coast, is Lefkada’s yacht base, a busy resort harbour facing a scatter of small islands: Madouri close in, then Sparti, Skorpidi and Skorpios, once the Onassis family’s and now the Rybolovlev family’s. Day boats run out to the islands from the quay. A yacht lies among them, with the whole group of islands within reach of its tender, the small boat a yacht carries.

  3. Vasiliki

    Vasiliki, in the far south, is a village and harbour on a wide bay that is one of the best-known windsurfing waters in the Mediterranean, with a hundred boards and the sailing craft out on a summer afternoon. A yacht takes the port at the quieter end. Vasiliki is 25 kilometres of mountain road from the town and far from the marina.

  4. Porto Katsiki

    Porto Katsiki is the great beach of the west coast, a pale crescent at the foot of a concave white cliff on the Ionian side of the island. A stair leads down from the clifftop, but the approach from the sea is the better one, and day boats run out from Nydri. A yacht lies off the cliff for the view and the clear blue water beneath it.