You do not have to travel by boat to Levkas (Lefkada). It can be reached easily by motor vehicle, after crossing the two small bridges over the channel that separates it from the opposite coast of Central Greece.
The island is 295 sq. km. in area and has 117 km. of coastline. Its terrain is mainly mountainous, with Elati as the highest peak (1,182 m. a.s.L), a few plains, dense vegetation cover in the eastern and southern parts. The east coast rolls gently to the sea and is sheltered and bordered by verdant islets. In contrast, the west coast is steep and forms small coves with golden sands. The lagoon just outside the town is an important wetlands habitat with rare fauna and flora.
The island was settled in the Neolithic Age and the first inhabitants were Lelegians. At that time it was part of Central Greece, but tradition has it that the Corinthian colonists who founded the city of Leukas in the sixth century BC cut through the isthmus that linked the peninsula with the mainland. During the Peloponnesian War Leukas supported the Corinthians, later it was subjugated by the kingdom of Macedon and subsequently became a Roman province (197 BC). In Byzantine times it fell into decline and after the Sack of Constantinople by the Franks (1204) it became part of the Despotate of Epirus. It subsequently came under the yoke of the Ottoman Turks until 1684. It was united with Greece in 1864.
Capital and main harbour of the island is the serene Eptanesian town of Lefkada that spreads along the seaboard, facing the coast of Akarnania. It is very picturesque with colourful, tiled-roofed houses, lovely squares, narrow streets and the waterfront promenade which is always busy.
It is worth visiting Bosketo Park, adorned with busts of distinguished sons of the island, and the house where the national poet of Japan, Y. Koizumi (Lefkadios Herne) was born. Particularly impressive is the castle of Santa Maura, built in 1300 by the Sicilian Giovanni Orsini, next to the man-made canal on an islet in the lagoon, and subsequently added to by the Venetians and the Turks.
At the centre of the town is the church of St Spyridon (late 17th c.), while other churches of considerable interest are St Nicholas (1687), Christ Pantocrator (1684), St Menas (1707), the 'Penniless Saints' (Aghii Anargyri), the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple (Eisodia tis Theotokou).
Noteworthy are the Archaeological Museum (with finds from excavations on the island, spanning the Palaeolithic Age into Roman times, tel. 26450-21.635), the Folklore Museum (with reproduction of a traditional Lefkadian house), the Public Library (tel. 26450-22.502), the Collection of Postbyzantine Icons (housed in an impressive mansion) and the private Museum of Phonographs-Old Mementoes (it includes old gramophones, gramophone records, objets d’art, old banknotes etc.).
Outside the town are the monastery of the Virgin Phaneromene (near the village of Fryni), the most important place of pilgrimage on Lefkada, with notable icons and a katholikon built in 1634; the monastery of the Virgin Odegetria, the oldest monastic foundation on the island, built around 1450 with a single-naved timber-roofed church; the church of St John of Antzousis in which, tradition has it, Paul the Apostle preached Christianity. Six kilometres southeast of the town are the ruins of ancient Leukas, one of the largest cities in area in Greece, with remains of a theatre and fortification wall. Eleven kilometres farther south (in the area of Kavalo) is the Melissa Gorge, where there are ten old watermills in and amongst the plane trees.