Cyclades Islands : Amorgos, Andros, Folegandros, Ios, Kea, Kythnos, Milos, Mykonos, Naxos, Paros and Antiparos, Santorini, Sifnos, Serifos, Sikinos, Syros, Tinos

Northern Aegean Islands:
Chios, Ikaria, Limnos, Lesvos, Samos, Samothraki, Thassos

Ionian Islands:
Corfu (Kerkyra), Ithaki, Kefalonia, Kythera, Lefkada, Paxos, Zakynthos

Saronic Islands:
Aegina, Angistri, Poros, Hydra, Salamina, Spetsis

Sporades Islands:
Alonissos, Skiathos, Skopelos, Skyros

Dodecanese Islands:
Astypalia, Halki, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kassos, Kastellorizo, Kos, Leros, Nisyros, Patmos, Rhodes, Symi, Tilos

Other Islands:
Crete, Evia, Cyprus

Ionian Islands - Lefkada (Levkas, Lefkadhia, Leucas)

Lefkada, or Levkas, is a 117-square-mile hilly mass of limestone and coal-bearing shale that rises in the center to Mt. Elati. Its chief town, Lefkas, lies at the northeastern corner, which in antiquity was separated from the rest of the island by a highly defensible marshy isthmus. Most of the population live in the valleys or on the wooded east coast. Mycenaean remains on the east coast have left evidence of early occupancy, and some scholars actually think that Lefkada, instead of Ithaca, was the original home of Odysseus. One of its primary features is the canal, marked at both ends today by a Crusades-era castle.

In the mid-7th century BC, Corinthian colonists dug a canal through the isthmus to the capital when they located themselves just south of it; five hundred years, later, a stone bridge, which still lies there as ruins, was constructed to the main island. (In the 20th century, the canal was re-cut and now serves as a corridor for ships.) The Romans made Lefkas a free city in the second century AD; but later the island was seized and ruled by the Despotate of Epirus and the Turks, from whom it passed back and forth to Venice. Later, it shared the French and British occupations of the rest of the Ionian Islands, and ultimately was restored to Greece.

It suffered some losses from severe earthquakes in the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. At the southwestern tip of the island, fragments of the ruined temple of Apollo Leucatas still remain; nearby are the 200-foot white cliffs that gave the island its Greek name. In antiquity, a Leucadian leap was an ordeal one could undergo – a leap from those 200-foot cliffs served as a judgment of the gods, with survivors deemed innocent of all they were accused of. Legend has it that the Lesbos poet Sappho, desperate with love, ended her life in this way.

In Levkas, you can visit the castle of Santa Maura, its eight-foot walls still looming over the northern entrance to the Levkas Canal. In its dungeons, you can see the small barred openings through which food was dropped to prisoners in Turkish and Venetian days. Or you can visit the sunken gardens of Livadhi, where a rain-filled lake in winter becomes a lush and fertile vineyard in the summer. Bronze age graves have been excavated on the island, and nearby Sivota Bay provides breathtaking views. It was near the island of Levkas that Cleopatra turned and fled the Romans, dying by her own hand in Egypt. History fills the air.

Economic activities include olive oil production and some small cultivation of cereal, and the currant has become one of the chief cash crops. Cotton, flax, tobacco, and valonia are also produced and exported, along with much red wine.