Meganisi

Meganisi is the island the Ionian charter fleet stops at, and almost nobody else does. It lies 25 minutes across the water from Nydri, has about 1,000 people in three villages, and receives a fraction of the attention paid to the islands it sits between.

Each of the three villages has its own errand. Spartochori stands on a shelf above its harbour, reached by a climb, and looks down on the masts. Katomeri, the highest, is the seat of the municipality, where the island’s business is done. Vathy is the port: a working quay, a row of tavernas along it, and the fishing boats tied up at the end.

The coast is why the yachts come. Along the southern shore the limestone is undercut. The Papanikolis cave, among the largest in Greece, is named for the submarine said to have sheltered in it during the war. It runs so far back into the cliff that a tender, a yacht’s small boat, can go in under its roof and out of the daylight altogether.

Fly to Preveza, drive down through Lefkada to Nydri, and cross. Many visitors arrive already afloat. Three nights ashore is generous. The island is better understood as the quiet end of a week on the water, with the olive terraces above Vathy walked early, before the wind gets up.

House Notes

  1. The address

    Keromoussi holds a private peninsula of 5 acres at Ambelaki Bay, less than 2 kilometres from Vathy. It is for adults only, open from June to September, and the one house on the island that reads as a retreat rather than a room. Three deluxe suites, Kalamos, Ithaki and Thilia, take the sea view, but ask for the fourth, which has its own pool and steps straight onto the hotel’s beach.

  2. The quay

    Errikos is the table in the centre of Vathy, serving grilled fish, octopus and mussels from the day’s catch at lunch and dinner. Stavros is the other: it began in Katomeri in July 1988, moved down to the port in April 2002 and is still a family kitchen buying from island suppliers. Take Errikos first, and Stavros when the quay has filled.

  3. Lakis

    Vicky and Panos opened Lakis in Spartochori four decades ago, and the family cooks there now. Traditional dishes, the moussaka among them, are made from local produce and served in a courtyard under flowers, set back from the lanes. This is the village table rather than the port table, which is the reason to take it.

  4. The shores

    Of three beaches, ranked by effort, Agios Ioannis below Spartochori asks the least: road, parking, a pebble shore and an all-day kitchen behind it. Limonari, on the south-east coast, is pebble and rock with a single canteen, 25 minutes on foot down from Katomeri, and the one to bring a mask to. Pasoumaki asks the most: the coast road east out of Vathy, then a flight of steps down to a cove with nothing on it at all.

  5. Loutrolimni

    Loutrolimni is the exception on an island whose beaches mostly take a car. The track down needs a jeep and nothing softer, so the sound approach is by water. Nothing is organised there, with no canteen, no umbrella and no shade beyond the rock’s own, and the water runs a clean turquoise over pale stone; give it a morning and carry the day’s water in.

  6. The tracks

    Before the road, the villages were joined on foot, and the municipality has marked the tracks that joined them. Spartochori down to Vathy is the long one, 5.8 km in an hour and twenty minutes; Katomeri to Spartochori is 3.3 km, and Atherinos up to Katomeri barely 1 km. Take the long track at first light, before the day is on the stone.

  7. The tumuli

    Between 2011 and 2014 the 36th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, under Olympia Vicatou, opened 16 Submycenaean burial mounds on rocky summits of the Podi peninsula, at the south-eastern end of the island, with the sea on three sides. Each is a circular stone cairn over a slab-built grave. A Naue II sword and spearheads came out of them, which is why the dead are read as warriors, and nothing is laid out for visitors.

  8. Panthera

    On the rocky north shore of Kythros, the islet off southern Meganisi, one hall survives of a karst cave whose roof collapsed and sealed everything beneath it. Nena Galanidou of the University of Crete has excavated it since 2015, finding Levallois cores and flakes (a stone-tool technique), fallow deer and wild boar, and leopard bones from the periods when no one lived there. It was Neanderthal ground, occupied when the sea stood low enough to walk across.

  9. Taphos

    Meganisi is identified as the Taphos of the Odyssey, and the Taphians sailed from here as traders in iron and copper, and as pirates when it suited them. In Book One, Athena comes to Telemachus disguised as Mentes, ‘lord of the Taphian men who love their oars’, and the Taphians sent 40 ships to Troy. Nothing on the quay will tell you any of it.

  10. Pro Dive

    Aris Speggos worked this water out of Nidri from 2004 and moved the base across to Vathy port in 2024, so the same coast is now dived from the island rather than the mainland. He instructs himself, with Christos Bassioukas, James Lovely and Fanis Giannopoulos alongside him, and courses and guided dives run from the port. The visibility is the reason to go under.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Vathy

    Vathy, on the north coast, is the island’s principal port and where a chartered vessel makes fast: at the town quay, with the fishing boats at its end, or at Odyseas Marina, alongside the village since 2008, with 72 berths for vessels up to 100 feet and piers faced in stone. A berth is arranged in advance with the marina’s own office. Meganisi lies 4 nautical miles south-east of Lefkada.

  2. Spilia

    Spilia, at the north-western end of the island, is the second port and the first call a ferry makes coming over from Lefkada. The excursion boats and the fishing fleet keep the water below, and a vessel lies at the harbour. Spartochori stands directly above it on the bluff, so the village is a climb rather than a walk.

  3. Papanikolis

    The Papanikolis cave opens on the south-western tip of the island and is reached only from the sea, as no path comes down to it; the Giovani cave lies along the same shore. A vessel lies off the cliff face and the visit is made from the water, with no quay, no village and nobody there who is not afloat. It is an anchorage for an afternoon, not for a night.

  4. Skorpios

    Skorpios belongs to the Municipality of Meganisi, not to Lefkada. It is 83 hectares of private ground, lying with Sparti between Meganisi and the Lefkada shore. Because the island is private, a vessel lies off in open water and nobody steps ashore, so the visit is the water and the view of the shore from the deck.

  5. Atherinos

    Atherinos is a cove that the municipality names the island’s most popular anchorage. It has no port and no village, so a vessel lies in the bay itself, with only the island’s own boats for company. Katomeri, the seat of the municipality, stands on the height above, close enough to walk up to.

  6. Kalamos and Kastos

    Kalamos and Kastos are Meganisi’s eastern neighbours, and the ferry to Kalamos comes from Mytikas on the mainland, not from Meganisi. Kalamos has a port town of some 450 people on its east coast, the village of Episkopi with 40, and Kefali, called Porto Leone by the Venetians and abandoned after the 1953 earthquake. Kastos has one village of about 40 people and two harbours: the village quay, and Sarakiniko behind it.