Lefkada

About

Lefkada (Greek: Λευκάδα, Lefkáda, [lefˈkaða]), also known as Lefkas or Leukas (Ancient Greek and Katharevousa: Λευκάς, Leukás, modern pronunciation Lefkás) and Leucadia, is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea on the west coast of Greece, connected to the mainland by a long causeway and floating bridge. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Lefkada. It is situated in the northern part of the island, approximately 25 minutes by automobile away from Aktion National Airport. The island is part of the regional unit of Lefkada.

Lefkada measures 35 kilometres (22 miles) from north to south, and 15 kilometres (9 miles) from east to west. The area of the island is about 302 square kilometres (117 sq mi), the area of the municipality (including the islands Kalamos, Kastos and several smaller islets) is 333.58 km 2 (128.80 sq mi). Its highest point is the mountain Stavrota, at 1,158 metres (3,799 feet) above sea level, situated in the middle of the island. The east coast section of the island has the small resorts of Lygia, Nikiana and Perigiali, all north of Nidri, the largest resort on the island. It is set in a sheltered location, with views across to Skorpios (formerly owned by Aristotle Onassis ), Meganisi and other small islands, as well as the Greek mainland. The main coastal road from Lefkada to Vasiliki runs through the village, although a bypass has now been completed which skirts the village to the west. There are regular car ferries to Kefalonia, Ithaca and Meganissi.

20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Nidri is the resort of Vasiliki, a windsurfing center. There are ferries to Kefalonia and Ithaca from Vasiliki. South of Vasiliki is Cape Lefkada, where Cephalus and the Greek female poet Sappho allegedly leapt to their death from the 30 m high cliffs on two separate occasions.

The famous beach of Porto Katsiki is located on Lefkada's west coast. Lefkada was attached to mainland Greece (see below about Homer's Ithaca being Lefkada). The Corinthians dug a trench in the 7th century BC on its isthmus.

The southernmost tip of the island is called Cape Dukato, a name sometimes applied to the whole island.

The island has a typical Mediterranean climate with hot summers and cool winters, or Csa according to the Köppen climate classification system.

The island has a typical Mediterranean climate with hot summers and cool winters, or Csa according to the Köppen climate classification system.

The island is linked to Odysseus, the hero of Homer 's Odyssey, who ruled it and neighbouring islands from Ithaca. The German archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld, having performed excavations at various locations on Lefkada, was able to obtain funding to do work on the island by suggesting that Lefkada was Homer's Ithaca, and the palace of Odysseus was located west of Nydri on the south coast of Lefkada. There have been suggestions by local tourism officials that several passages in the Odyssey point to Lefkada as a possible model for Homeric Ithaca. The most notable of these passages, pushed by the local tourism board, describes Ithaca as an island reachable on foot, which was the case for Lefkada, since it is not really an island, being connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. According to Strabo, the coast of Acarnania was called Leucas in earlier times.

The ancient sources call Leucas a Corinthian colony, perhaps with a Corcyraen participation. There was a cult to Apollo Leucatos at the south western cape of the island, where white cliffs stand, that may have given its name to the island. This was a site where criminals were thrown (hence "Leucadian trial") in order to judge their guilt or innocence from their injury at the fall. Furthermore, according to legend, it was the jumping spot of Sappho when she committed suicide out of frustrated love and also that of Artemisia of Caria, and therefore may have some connection to Aphrodite.

During the Peloponnesian War, Leucas joined the Peloponnesian League. Later, the town was conquered during the 3rd century BC by Agathocles of Syracuse and was annexed to the Roman Republic in the next century, during their conquest of Greece. The famous naval battle of Actium was fought not far away, to the north east.

In antiquity, the island was connected to the mainland by a bridge, which was the longest stone bridge of ancient Greece.

In medieval British legend, Brutus of Troy found Lefkada abandoned after pirate attacks, and, after offering a sacrifice to a statue of Diana in the temple of a ruined city there, was granted a vision telling him to go to Britain and found an empire.

No information survives on the island during the early Byzantine period, when the town possibly disappeared in the turmoils of the Migration Period. Nevertheless, unlike the Epirote mainland, where widespread Slavic settlement is attested from the late 6th until mid-8th centuries, only a handful of traces attest to a Slavic settlement in Lefkada.

Information continues to be sparse during the Middle Byzantine period. The island is attested as a bishopric at the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 879, and was raised to archbishopric under Emperor Leo VI the Wise ( r. 886–912 ). Administratively, it was likely part of the Theme of Cephallenia. Liutprand of Cremona visited the island during his 968 embassy to Constantinople. In 1099, it was raided by Dagobert of Pisa, and it is mentioned in al-Idrisi 's geography in the mid-12th century.

Further information: Latinokratia The Republic of Venice was accorded privileges in the island in 1198 and possession of the island in the treaty of partition of the Byzantine Empire in 1204. Lefkada apparently became part of the Despotate of Epirus, although this is not explicitly attested until 1259.

The name Santa Maura is first attested for the island and its capital in 1292, when Genoese ships in Byzantine employ raided it. In 1295, the Despot of Epirus Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas ceded the island to his son-in-law, the Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos John I Orsini. Orsini soon after received permission from Charles II of Naples to build a castle there, which became the core of the Castle of Santa Maura.

The Orsini family lost Lefkada in 1331 to Walter VI of Brienne, who in 1343 ceded the castrum Sancte Maure and the island to the Venetian Graziano Giorgio. In 1360/62, Leonardo I Tocco seized Lefkada, assuming the title of duke ( dux Lucate ), whence the island is sometimes also referred to as "the Duchy" ( el Ducato and variants thereof) in Western sources of the period. The local Orthodox archbishop was evicted. After Albanian clans took over much of Epirus in the 1350s and 1360s, they launched frequent attacks on the island between 1375 and 1395. Carlo I Tocco ( r. 1376–1429 ) made the island the capital of his domains, which apart from the County Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos also included much of the Epirote mainland, and enlarged the fortified town.

In 1413, the Prince of Achaea, Centurione II Zaccaria, launched an attack on Lefkada and its castle with Albanian mercenaries, but were defeated with help from the Republic of Venice. The Ottomans captured most of Epirus and raided the island, leading the Tocci to consider ceding it to the Venetians.

Faced with expanding Ottoman power in the mainland, the Tocci became vassals of the Ottoman sultans. The last of them, Leonardo III Tocco ( r. 1448–1479 ) was helped to maintain his rule through his marriage to Milica Branković, a niece of the highly esteemed stepmother of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror ( r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481 ); but when she died, he married the Aragonese Francesca Marzano. The couple quickly became hated by their Greek subjects due to their oppressive taxation. Lefkada, along with Cephalonia and Zakynthos, was captured by the Ottoman admiral Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1479. Part of the population was deported to Constantinople as part of Mehmed's policy to repopulate his capital.

The Ottomans called the island Levkada ( Ottoman Turkish : لفكادة or لفقادة ), with the name Aya Mavra ( ايامورة, from Greek Αγία Μαύρα, meaning "Santa Maura") reserved for the castle and capital of the island, where almost the entire population lived. Under Ottoman rule, it was initially a kaza of the sanjak of Karli-Eli, which from c. 1550 belonged to the Eyalet of the Archipelago, subordinated to the chief admiral of the Ottoman navy, the Kapudan Pasha. The kaza of Lefkada comprised not only the island, but also part of the adjoining mainland. The Venetians briefly occupied the island in 1502–03 during the Second Ottoman–Venetian War, but returned it to the Ottomans in the final peace settlement. With about a thousand inhabitants in c. 1530, the town of Lefkada was both the largest settlement and the main military installation in the sanjak, with 111 soldiers and 9 artillerymen. As with the rest of the sanjak, at the time the entire population appears to have been Christian, and only the fortress garrisons and administrators were Muslim; thus the only mosques were located inside the fortresses.