Greek Islands

Kefalonia (Island)

Kefalonia Ag. Efthymia small port

Welcome to Kefalonia!

While you may not yet have had a chance to visit this large Ionian Island, you have most probably heard of it thanks to the recent novel and movie of the same name, “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.” If you saw the movie, you may have admired some of the scenery of this large mountainous island; it was very nice, but didn’t even come close to the real thing! (Not to mention the fictitious script; could not have been further removed from historical facts!)

Kefalonia, (also spelled Cephalonia and sometimes Kefallonia, stressed on the last syllable, and, to make things more complicated, also Kefallinia, stressed on the syllable before last!) is the largest island in the Ionian Sea at 781 square kilometers, and has the highest mountain, Mt. Enos at 1,628 meters. It offers the best combination of magnificent scenery, traditional lifestyle, lovely mountain villages, impressive caves, and an outstanding coastline of 254 kilometers, with some of the best beaches to be found in all of Greece. If all of that is not enough to entice you to see for yourself, then consider that Kefalonia also makes one of the best wines in the country, the lovely Robola.

The island has about 30,000 inhabitants, with about 7,500 of them living in the capital of Argostoli located in the southwestern portion of the island. The capital is also one of the two main ports of the island, the other being Sami, situated about 25 kilometers northeast of the capital in a well-protected bay opposite the southern portion of the nearby smaller island of Ithaki, or Ithaca. While the island has been inhabited since the Paleolithic period, much of the architecture that you will see in the main towns and seaside resorts is relatively new, built after the 1953 devastating earthquake that destroyed so much of the island.

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