The Ephemeris

TheEphemeris

Daily anniversaries, writers, places and events from the Ionian.

What is happening in Lefkada

Make a day of the island.

A map-led guide to performances, festivals and gatherings, with the cultural Ephemeris continuing below.

Next on the island

The live agenda

Choose a date or category, then open an event for time, venue and organiser details.

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The event archive

The island, event by event.

Upcoming and past gatherings, with their original announcements, venue details and source links.

Keep exploring

Events open the door. Culture gives the visit depth.

PlayTake the quiz ExploreLiterary map TodayOn this day

A literary map of the Ionian

Writers and places.

This interactive map links writers and historical figures to places across the Ionian. Select a pin for the available notes and sources.

On This Day in the Ionian

27June

Letters

Lafcadio Hearn Is Born on Lefkada

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born on Lefkada on 27 June 1850, when the island belonged to the British-protected Ionian state. His mother, Rosa Antoniou Cassimati, was Greek and from Kythira; his father, Charles Bush Hearn, was an Irish military surgeon. Hearn left Lefkada at age two.

Selected from the Ephemeris for this date
Also on the calendar
20 Oct
Kennedy and Onassis marry on Skorpios
On 20 October 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis in a chapel on Skorpios, near the Lefkadian shore.
25 Apr
Dörpfeld dies in the Nydri area
Sources place Wilhelm Dörpfeld’s death on 25 or 26 April 1940. His excavations documented the Early Helladic tumuli at Steno; current archaeology has not adopted his claim that Lefkada was Homer’s Ithaca.
12 Aug
The 1953 earthquake strikes the southern Ionian
On 12 August 1953 the largest of three earthquakes devastated Kefalonia and Zakynthos and raised part of Kefalonia by about sixty centimetres.
29 Mar
The treaty that preceded Union
On 29 March 1864 the Great Powers and Greece signed the Treaty of London, under which Britain agreed to cede the Ionian Islands to the Kingdom of Greece.

Poem of the Week

Portrait of the poet Aristotelis Valaoritis.

Aristotelis Valaoritis

O Fotinos

Valaoritis worked on the islet of Madouri, in the bay off Nydri, and wrote historical poetry in demotic Greek. His unfinished O Fotinos takes the Lefkadian revolt of 1357 against the Tocco rulers as its subject.

The Margin

Lefkada has a road connection to the mainland.

A causeway and a movable floating bridge cross the channel at the island’s entrance. The bridge opens for vessels and then returns to carry road traffic. This modern connection does not establish how people crossed the channel in Homeric times.

How well do you know the Ionian?

Question one of fifteen

What does the name Lefkada mean?

White. The name comes from leukos, white, for the pale cliffs of Cape Lefkatas at the island’s southern tip.

The full quiz covers the history, geography and writers of the Ionian Islands.

Read the TachyDrome

The TachyDrome

Further into the Ionian

Explore the journal