During your holiday on the island, in addition to being fascinated by its natural beauty, you will discover some interesting historical curiosities about Kefalonia.
Follow us through this brief summary of the most important events and you'll see that even an island can be crucial to the development of an entire nation.
Over the centuries, Kefalonia has been dominated by various populations, both Western and Eastern.
Among these we remember the Roman, Byzantine and Venetian ones, due to its geographically strategic position as a junction between east and west.
This has led, in addition to wars and devastation, to a significant cultural exchange.
Arts such as music, literature, painting and architecture have strongly influenced the lives of the inhabitants of Kefalonia.
For this reason, the culture of the Ionian islands (Corfu, Lefkada, Kefalonia and Zakynthos) is one of the most important and refined in all of Greece.
Mythology.
It is possible to trace the presence of various cultures that populated the island as far back as 10,000 BC.
They reached their maximum splendor around 1,500–1,100 BC during the Mycenaean period.
According to Greek mythology, the name Cephalonia, or better yet Kefalonia, is due to a young man namedKefalos.
Arriving in Kefalonia from Athens, he conquered a group of inhabitants of the western part of the island called Taphi.
After this, it seems that Kefalos dominated the island for a long time before being appointed king and then giving the name of Kefalonia to the current island.
He had four sons, Pali, Sami, Krani, and Proni, to whom he assigned each an area of the island.
It is no coincidence that even today some of these names identify certain areas or villages on the island, such as Sami and Krani (an area located at the base of the mountains around Argostoli).
Cephalonia consisted mainly of four autonomous cities, each having its own currency.
In Homer 's time the island was one of Ulysses ' possessions , in fact recent excavations, conducted in the vicinity of Poros, would seem to demonstrate that the capital of Ulysses' kingdom was in Kefalonia and not in Ithaca.
Remains of villas near Skala and Agia Efimia, the discovery of a mosaic in the temple dedicated to Poseidon near the beach of Vatsa, testify to the presence of the Romans on the island.
Finds of Roman settlements have been brought to light in the cities of Sami and Fiskardo.
The dominations.
From 1000 AD onwards, real occupations of the island began.
At the end of the 11th century, with the weakening of the Byzantine Empire, the island came under Norman domination.
During this period Robert Guiscard died on the island , from whose name the famous tourist port of Fiskardo derived through a deformation .
From 1500 to 1797 Cephalonia belonged to the Republic of Venice.
After the Treaty of Campo Formio, by which Venice was ceded to Austria, it saw alternating French and British rulers.
It was part of the Republic of the Seven United Islands, under Russian-Ottoman protectorate but under Italian/Venetian-Greek leadership, therefore from 1800 to 1807 the first experience of Greek self-government took place.
At the end of Venetian rule, Kefalonia was conquered by the French, who took possession of it under Napoleon shortly before 1800.
Then came the Russian, Turkish and finally English dominations.
In 1815 the Congress of Vienna passed a law whereby the Ionian Islands would be called the “United States of the Ionian Islands”.
They thus became an independent state under the protection of England.
The construction of the major public works on the island, such as bridges, roads and public buildings, is owed to the English government.
Among these is the Market of Lixouri, the first courthouse to be built in Kefalonia and which unfortunately collapsed during the devastating earthquake of 1953.
Between 1800 and 1850 the inhabitants of Kefalonia, inspired by the French and American revolutions, sought their independence and freedom from English government.
They fought a harsh and bloody revolution, which led to the proclamation of free elections by the Queen in 1850.
Later, the first Greek Parliament called the “Ionian Parliament” was formed.
On May 21, 1864, a holiday still celebrated today in all seven Ionian islands, the English definitively left the island and Kefalonia joined Greece.
The hardest and most difficult times.
From 1900 onwards there has been a succession of devastation, battles and geological tragedies.
It begins with the two world wars, the second of which was experienced in a particularly dramatic way by both the Italians and the Greeks themselves.
It is recalled that in 1943 the Acqui Division, called to guard Cephalonia and the other Ionian islands, following the armistice signed by the Badoglio government with the English and Americans, had to choose whether to surrender to the Germans or resist.
They chose the path of armed resistance, and what was later called the "Cephalonia Massacre" began.
The number of Italian deaths was impressive:
- 5000 soldiers massacred
- 446 officers
- 3000 survivors embarked on 3 steamships and destined for the Nazi concentration camps were sunk at sea by mines
To this day, a road leads to a promontory above Argostoli where there is a monument dedicated to the fallen Italians of the Acqui Division.
Two dramatic tragedies have struck these lands in the past:
- The civil war that broke out at the end of the Second World War which caused an incredible number of victims
- The devastating earthquake of 1953 that destroyed 90% of the houses in Kefalonia, plunging it into an unprecedented economic and geological disaster
During this dramatic period, however, an important social and political renewal occurred, brought about by new regulations enacted in favor of agricultural workers.
They were given more rights, and the opportunity for poor and humble people, previously considered serfs, to become economically independent.
Kefalonia finally reached full economic and social development in the late 1960s during the dictatorship of George Papadopoulos.
Running water and electricity were brought to the island, and telephone lines were installed in the 1980s.
