Spinalonga

Spinalonga is a small rocky island guarding the entrance to the sheltered lagoon of Elounda, in the Gulf of Mirabello on the north-east coast of Crete, in the Lasithi regional unit. Barely 400 metres long and separated from the mainland by a narrow channel, it has one of the most dramatic and poignant histories of any place on the island, and it is visited today only on a boat trip, with no accommodation of its own.

The Venetians fortified the island in 1579, raising a formidable ring of bastioned walls around its shores to command the sea lanes and protect the salt pans and harbour of Elounda. So strong were the defences that Spinalonga held out for decades after the rest of Crete fell, surrendering to the Ottomans only in 1715. Under Ottoman rule a small town grew within the walls, inhabited into the early twentieth century.

In 1903 the island took on the role for which it is best remembered, becoming a leper colony, one of the last in Europe. For more than half a century, until it closed in 1957, people with Hansen's disease were sent here from across Greece to live out their lives in isolation. Far from a place of mere despair, the community built shops, a church, a small cinema and a sense of ordinary life behind the old walls, a story brought to a wide audience by Victoria Hislop's novel The Island. Visitors today walk through the tunnel gateway, along the main street of ruined houses and around the Venetian ramparts, with the disinfection rooms, church and cemetery still standing.

Spinalonga is reached by frequent boats in season from the nearby village of Plaka, just across the water, and from Elounda and Agios Nikolaos a little further away. It makes an easy and rewarding half-day trip, often combined with a swim and lunch in Plaka or Elounda. The island is exposed and largely without shade, so it is best explored in the softer light of late spring or early autumn, or in the cooler part of a summer day.