Kefalonia: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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On the edge of Argostoli the sea runs into holes in the rock and disappears. For a century nobody could say where it went — mills were built on the inflow and the water simply vanished. In 1963 Austrian geologists poured dye into the holes and waited, and two weeks later the dye came up on the far side of the island, sixteen kilometres away. This walk is the near end of that, plus the town the earthquake rebuilt. Two hours, flat.

A short history of Kefalonia

Kefalonia is mentioned in Homer's poems as part of the kingdom of Odysseus. From 1500 Venice ruled it for almost 300 years, followed by France and Britain, until in 1864 it was united with Greece. In September 1943, after Italy surrendered, the Germans massacred thousands of Italian soldiers of the Acqui Division on the island. On 12 August 1953 an earthquake destroyed almost every house on the island, and only the village of Fiskardo in the north was spared. Tens of thousands of residents emigrated afterwards, and the capital, Argostoli, was almost entirely rebuilt.

The ten best sights in Kefalonia

1
Argostoli
The capital, rebuilt after 1953, and loggerhead turtles come into the harbour for fish scraps
2
Lithostroto
The main street, paved in stone and closed to cars, and the whole town walks it at eight
3
De Bosset Bridge
A stone bridge across the lagoon built in 1813, and it is the longest of its kind over seawater
4
Koutavos Lagoon
A shallow lagoon with a walking path round it, and it was a malaria swamp until the bridge
5
Katavothres
Sea water runs into holes in the rock here and comes out on the far side of the island
6
Fanari Lighthouse
A round colonnaded lighthouse on the point, rebuilt to its 1829 design after the earthquake
7
Lassi
The beach strip nearest the capital, and the sunset faces straight out to sea
8
Makris Gialos
Soft sand and shallow water ten minutes from town, and busy for the same reason
9
Platis Gialos
The next cove along, smaller and usually quieter
10
Lixouri
The second town, across the bay, and the ferry is the sensible way to reach it

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What is an audio walk?

Tours in Kefalonia →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Kefalonia:

Free walking tours in Kefalonia

The water that crosses the island underground

Katavothres · Sea water pours into fissures in the rock here and does not come back. Mills were built on the current in the nineteenth century and ground grain with seawater running into the ground. The dye test in 1963 proved the water crosses under the whole island and emerges at Karavomylos — and the 1953 earthquake changed the flow, which is why the mills no longer turn.
Fanari Lighthouse · A round lighthouse ringed with twenty Doric columns, built in 1829 under the British administration by Charles Napier, who governed the island and liked it enough to want to be buried here. The earthquake flattened it and it was rebuilt to the original drawings.
De Bosset Bridge · Built in 1813 by Charles Philippe De Bosset, a Swiss officer in British service who had been on the island a few months. It was made of wood first and finished in stone, it is about seven hundred metres long, and it is the longest stone bridge standing over seawater anywhere.
Koutavos Lagoon · Before the bridge this lagoon was a malarial swamp and the town kept its distance from it. The bridge let the water move, the swamp became a lagoon, and it is now a protected wetland — and loggerhead turtles come into it and into the harbour beside it.
Lithostroto · The main street of a town that was flattened in August 1953 — about ninety per cent of the buildings on this island came down in that earthquake. What stands here now was rebuilt low, wide and reinforced, and the bell tower on the street is a copy of the one that fell.
Korgialenios Museum · The museum that matters most here is a room of photographs: the island before August 1953 and the same streets after it. There is no object in it that explains the place better than two pictures of the same corner.

Where the water comes out

The east coast is the far end of the underground river, and it is also the limestone half of the island: a cave lake with no roof, a stalactite hall used as a concert venue, and a spring at the shore where the water from Argostoli finally reappears. Half a day with a car, and Melissani is worth timing — the light does what it does only around midday.

Karavomylos · This is where the dye came out in 1963, two weeks after it was poured into the rock at Argostoli. The water that surfaces here is brackish — part sea, part fresh — and it runs out of a small lake straight into the bay a few metres away. The crossing under the island takes about a fortnight.
Melissani · A cave with an underground lake whose roof collapsed at some point in the past, leaving a hole open to the sky. Around midday the sun comes through it at the right angle and the water turns a blue that looks artificial. The finds from the cave are votive, to Pan and the nymphs, and the lake is part of the same underground system as the Argostoli water.
Drogarati · A stalactite chamber found when an earthquake opened the roof about three hundred years ago, and it is large enough and resonant enough to be used as a concert hall — Maria Callas sang in it. The temperature inside stays around eighteen degrees all year.
Sami · The ferry port for Ithaca and for the mainland, and in antiquity one of the four city-states of the island — its walls are still on the hill above the town. The town you see was built after 1953 and much of the film of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was shot in it.
Antisamos · A pebble bay in a bowl of green hills, which on a limestone island is unusual — the slope here holds soil. It is the beach the film used, and the set that was built on it was removed afterwards, which is why there is nothing to see except the bay.
Agia Efimia · A working harbour rather than a resort, and the yachts that cross between the Ionian islands stop here instead of at Sami because the quay is sheltered and the water is deep. The village has stayed small because there is no beach worth the name in it.

The mountain, the fir and the village that stood

Kefalonia has the highest mountain in the Ionian and a tree that grows naturally nowhere else on earth, and it has one village that the 1953 earthquake left standing while it flattened everything else. Put those together and you get the north: a national park with wild horses in it, a Venetian fortress on a neck of land, and a harbour that still looks the way the island looked before. A full day and a car.

Mount Ainos · One thousand six hundred and twenty-eight metres, the highest point in the Ionian islands, and the dark trees on it are Abies cephalonica — the Kefalonian fir, which grows naturally on this mountain and almost nowhere else. The Venetians cut it for ships’ masts for three hundred years, and the forest that is left is what the park was created in 1962 to protect.
Ainos National Park · The second national park declared in Greece, and there is a herd of semi-wild horses living on the mountain inside it. They are descended from working animals that were let go, they have been up there for generations, and nobody feeds them.
Valsamata · The village in the Omala valley, flat ground between the mountains, and the monastery of Saint Gerasimos stands beside it — the island’s patron, whose body is kept there. The valley is also where the Robola grape is grown, on bare karst at six hundred metres, by a cooperative of about three hundred small growers.
Myrtos · The pebbles here are white because they are limestone, broken off the cliff and rounded by the sea, and the water looks the way it does because that white floor throws the light back up instead of absorbing it. The beach is also the reason to be careful: it shelves steeply and there is a current.
Assos · A village on a strip of land joining a headland to the island, with a Venetian fortress of 1593 behind it — two kilometres of wall around a hill with almost nothing left inside. After the 1953 earthquake the village was rebuilt with money raised in France, and the square carries a plaque that says so.
Fiskardo · This is the one village on Kefalonia that the 1953 earthquake did not bring down, which is why it is the only place on the island that still looks Venetian — everything else you have seen today was built after. It is named after Robert Guiscard, the Norman who was conquering his way east and died here of fever in 1085.

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Getting to Kefalonia and getting around

Kefalonia Airport · Eight kilometres south of Argostoli, and the season decides how many flights land
Argostoli Port · The ferry to Lixouri crosses the bay in twenty minutes and saves a forty-minute drive

Cheap eats in Kefalonia

Kefalonia has a meat pie with no pastry lid worth the name and a grape that grows on bare rock, and both are the island’s own. Kreatopita is the pie — meat, rice, herbs and a little cinnamon, baked for hours, and every family claims a different recipe. Robola is the wine, white and sharp, grown at six hundred metres on karst with almost no soil. The going rate for a souvlaki is a few euro; a plate of kreatopita is two or three times that.

The main street, Argostoli · A few euro, standing, and the street is closed to cars
Robola Cooperative · Tasting at the winery; three hundred small growers behind it
Agia Efimia · Harbour tables, and the fish comes off the boats in front of them
Fiskardo · The most expensive quay on the island; walk one street back
Poros · A port town that feeds its own people before its visitors
Valsamata · Village tavernas in the valley; meat, and the wine is local
Skala · The beach strip in the south-east, and it closes out of season
Lixouri · Across the bay, cheaper, and the ferry is twenty minutes

Museums in Kefalonia

Two small rooms, and between them they hold the two things that happened to this island: a Mycenaean past serious enough to argue about, and an earthquake that erased almost everything built since. One museum is objects, the other is photographs.

Archaeological Museum · Mycenaean tombs, and the island was a power then
Korgialenios Museum · Photographs of the same streets before and after August 1953
Drogarati · A cave used as a concert hall; eighteen degrees all year
Assos Castle · Two kilometres of Venetian wall with a village inside it once
Castle of Saint George · Above the village; the island’s capital until 1757

Nature and day trips near Kefalonia

Two things on this island exist nowhere else: a fir that grows naturally only on one mountain, and a river that runs under the whole island from one coast to the other. Add a cave lake with no roof and a national park with wild horses in it, and the interior is worth more days than the beaches.

Katavothres · Free, open, and the mills no longer turn
Melissani · Go at midday; the roof fell in and the light does the rest
Mount Ainos · One thousand six hundred metres; the road up is rough
Ainos National Park · Greece’s second national park, declared in 1962
Myrtos · White limestone pebbles; it shelves steeply, mind the current
Koutavos Lagoon · A shaded path round it, and turtles come into the harbour
Dafnoudi · Through a wood on foot, and there is a cave at the end

Things to do in Kefalonia with kids

The beaches near the capital are sandy and shallow and ten minutes away; the famous ones are pebbles with a drop. The caves are the thing children remember, and one of them is a boat ride on an underground lake.

Makris Gialos · Soft sand, shallow, and ten minutes from the capital
Platis Gialos · The smaller cove next door, usually quieter
Lourdas · A long south-coast beach with shade behind it
Skala · Sand, shallow water, and a Roman villa with mosaics behind it
Melissani · A boat on an underground lake; the ride is short
Xi Beach · Red clay sand, shallow a long way out, and the clay is the game

Holy places in Kefalonia

The churches here were nearly all rebuilt after 1953, so what is old on this island is the ground under them. The island’s patron lies in a monastery in the one flat valley, and the vineyard around it is named for him.

Saint Gerasimos, Omala · In the valley beside the village; modest dress
Castle of Saint George · The island’s capital until 1757, and a church inside the walls
Assos · The village church was rebuilt with money raised in France
Fiskardo · A Norman basilica by the harbour, roofless since an earthquake
Metaxata · Byron stayed here in 1823; the house fell in 1953
Kourkoumelata · Rebuilt from nothing by one shipowning family after 1953

Nightlife in Kefalonia

There is no strip on Kefalonia in the sense that Zakynthos has one. The evening is the pedestrian street in the capital, the harbour at Fiskardo for the yachts, and Skala and Lassi for a season. The island goes quiet early and most of it shuts in winter.

Lithostroto · The whole town walks it from eight; cars are not allowed
The harbour front · Tables along the water, and the turtles are under them
Fiskardo · The yacht quay; expensive, and it is the prettiest
Lassi · The bars near the capital, and the sunset first
Skala · The south-east strip, busy in season only
Agia Efimia · Quiet harbour tables, and the sailors are the crowd

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Frequently asked questions about Kefalonia

What is there to see in Kefalonia?

The top sights in Kefalonia are Argostoli, Lithostroto and De Bosset Bridge. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Kefalonia?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Kefalonia without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Kefalonia?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Kefalonia, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The water that crosses the island underground.

How do you get to Kefalonia and get around?

The main ways are Kefalonia Airport and Argostoli Port. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Kefalonia, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Kefalonia that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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