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Lefkada (, Lefkáda, ), also known as Lefkas or Leukas (Ancient Greek and Katharevousa: Λευκάς, Leukás, modern pronunciation Lefkás) and Leucadia, is a Greece island in the Ionian Sea on the west coast of Greece, connected to the mainland by a long causeway and Pontoon bridge. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Lefkada. It is situated on the northern part of the island, approximately 25 minutes by automobile away from Aktion National Airport. The island is part of the regional unit of Lefkada.
south of Nidri is the resort of Vasiliki, a [[windsurfing]] center. There are ferries to Kefalonia and Ithaca from Vasiliki. South of Vasiliki is Cape Lefkada, where [[Cephalus]] and the [[Greek|Ancient Greece]] female poet [[Sappho]] allegedly leapt to their death from the 30 m high cliffs on two separate occasions.[[Strabo]] 10.2.20
The famous beach of Porto Katsiki is located on Lefkada's west coast. Lefkada was attached to mainland Greece (see below about Homer's Ithaca being Lefkada). The Ancient Corinth dug a trench in the 7th century BC on its isthmus.Strabo 10.452
The southernmost tip of the island is called Cape Dukato, a name sometimes applied to the whole island.
The ancient sources call Leucas a Ancient Corinth colony, perhaps with a participation.Colony and mother city in ancient Greece By A. J. Graham Page 132 There was a cult to Apollo Leucatos at the south western cape of the island, where white cliffs stand that may have given its name to the island. This was a site where criminals were thrown (hence "Leucadian trial") in order to judge their guilt or innocence from their injury at the fall. Furthermore, according to legend, it was the jumping spot of Sappho when she committed suicide out of frustrated love and also that of Artemisia of Caria, and therefore may have some connection to Aphrodite.
During the Peloponnesian War, Leucas joined the Peloponnesian League. Later, the town was conquered during the 3rd century BC by Agathocles of Syracuse and was annexed to the Roman Republic in the next century, during their conquest of Greece. The famous naval battle of Actium was fought not far away, to the north east.
In antiquity, the island was connected to the mainland by a bridge which was the longest stone bridge of ancient Greece.
In medieval British legend, Brutus of Troy found Lefkada abandoned after pirate attacks, and after offering a sacrifice to a statue of Diana in the temple of a ruined city there, was granted a vision telling him to go to Great Britain and found an empire.
Information continues to be sparse during the middle Byzantine period. The island is attested as a bishopric at the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 879, and was raised to archbishopric under Emperor Leo VI the Wise (). Administratively, it was likely part of the Theme of Cephallenia. Liutprand of Cremona visited the island during his 968 embassy to Constantinople. In 1099 it was raided by Dagobert of Pisa, and it is mentioned in al-Idrisi's geography in the mid-12th century.
The name Santa Maura is first attested for the island and its capital in 1292, when Genoese ships in Byzantine employ raided it. In 1295, the Despot of Epirus Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas ceded the island to his son-in-law, the Count palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos John I Orsini. Orsini soon after received permission from Charles II of Naples to build a castle there, which became the core of the Castle of Santa Maura.
The Orsini family lost Lefkada in 1331 to Walter VI of Brienne, who in 1343 ceded the castrum Sancte Maure and the island to the Venetian Graziano Giorgio. In 1360/62, Leonardo I Tocco seized Lefkada, assuming the title of duke ( dux Lucate), whence the island is sometimes also referred to as "the Duchy" ( el Ducato and variants thereof) in Western sources of the period. The local Orthodox archbishop was evicted. After Albanians clans took over much of Epirus in the 1350s and 1360s, they launched frequent attacks on the island between 1375 and 1395. Carlo I Tocco () made the island the capital of his domains, which apart from the County palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos also included much of the Epirote mainland, and enlarged the fortified town.
In 1413, the Prince of Achaea, Centurione II Zaccaria, launched an attack on Lefkada and its castle with Albanian mercenaries, but were defeated with help from the Republic of Venice. The Ottoman Empire captured most of Epirus and raided the island, leading the Tocci to consider ceding it to the Venetians.
Faced with expanding Ottoman power in the mainland, the Tocci became vassals of the Ottoman sultans. The last of them, Leonardo III Tocco () was helped to maintain his rule through his marriage to Milica Branković, a niece of the highly esteemed stepmother of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (); but when she died, he married the Aragonese Francesca Marzano. The couple quickly became hated by their Greek subjects due to their oppressive taxation. Lefkada, along with Cephalonia and Zakynthos, was captured by the Ottoman admiral Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1479. Part of the population was deported to Istanbul as part of Mehmed's policy to repopulate his capital.
A lack of water led to the construction of a long aqueduct from the island's interior to the town in 1564, during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (). Bringing water to the walled town as well as to the much larger—some 700–800 houses—open town that had grown around it was one of the most important works of Ottoman civil architecture in the western Balkans. On top of the aqueduct was a footpath that provided the only access to the island other than by the sea. In the aftermath of the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Lepanto, the castle was unsuccessfully besieged by the forces of the Holy League. As a result, it was completely rebuilt and enlarged by the Kapudan Pasha Kılıç Ali Pasha in 1572–1574 into a hexagonal fortress with large towers as artillery platforms.
In the 17th century, Lefkada became a separate sanjak within the Eyalet of the Archipelago, although according to Evliya Çelebi it belonged briefly to the Morea Eyalet in the 15th and 17th centuries. Evliya visited the island in 1670/71 and left a long and accurate description of the fortifications as well as of the town, where Islam had apparently made considerable progress. According to Evliya, the walled town boasted five , including an Imperial Mosque ( Hünkar Camii), which was a converted church, a minor mosque ( masjid), a madrasa, two schools ( maktab), a bath ( Turkish bath), and five public fountains ( çeshme). The walled town with its 200 stone houses was now occupied exclusively by Muslims, while the two suburbs ( varosh) to the east and west were built of wood and had a mixed population. The western one was far larger, with 300 houses to 40–50 in the eastern one, and had a wooden mosque and masjid, a Khanqah, a maktab, two , as well as seven small churches. Evliya remarks that this suburb had many wineshops, which were popular with both the inhabitants and the garrison. Another suburb (the Varosh-i Lefqada) was located on the island itself, with some 700 houses, all of them inhabited by Christian Greeks, who had 20 churches. Evliya's account is corroborated by Jacob Spon and George Wheler's account that the town had about 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants, mostly Greeks or Turks.
According to the descriptions of travellers like Evliya, Lefkada was an urban centre of some importance, boasting "two of the largest works of Ottoman civil and military architecture in the Western Balkans", namely the aqueduct built by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent () and the Castle of Santa Maura, which was completely rebuilt by Kılıç Ali Pasha in the reign of Sultan Selim II ().
The Venetians modernized the castle in the 1710s, removing the last traces of the medieval castle and adding outworks towards the eastern, mainland side. During the Seventh Ottoman–Venetian War, following the Ottoman reconquest of the Morea in 1715, the Venetians initially abandoned Lefkada to focus their resources on the defence of Corfu. The castle was abandoned and partly demolished, but after the Siege of Corfu ended in a Venetian victory, the island was reoccupied and the fortifications restored.
Venetian rule over the island was uninterrupted, apart from a rebellion of the local Greeks in 1769, until the Fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797.
Much of the town, including the Ottoman aqueduct, was destroyed in an earthquake in 1825. After this, the town was rebuilt in wood to prevent similar damage. In 1864 the islands were ceded to Greece. The island then numbered about 24,000 inhabitants.
The municipality covers the island of Lefkada and the smaller islands of Kastos and Kalamos.
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