Spinalonga Within Living Memory

The first time I stood at the gate on Spinalonga, a Greek woman in the queue ahead of me pointed at the low stone building just inside and told her daughter, quietly, that her grandmother had known people who lived there. Not “the leper colony,” said like a museum label. People. That sentence has stayed with me longer than any of the photographs I took that day, and it is the reason I think most visitors get Spinalonga slightly wrong before they even step off the boat.

More than a photogenic fort

It is easy to see why the postcard version wins. The islet sits at the mouth of the Elounda lagoon, on the gulf of Mirabello, crowned by a Venetian fortress built in 1579 to guard the approach to Agios Nikolaos. Seen from a boat deck with a drink in hand, it reads as pure scenery: honey-coloured walls, blue water, a good sunset. That reading is not wrong, exactly. It is just badly incomplete, and treating Spinalonga only as a pretty stop on a day out does a disservice to what actually happened there. It is the same view that fills the sunset cruises out of Elounda most evenings, sold as pure scenery with none of the history attached.

Crete has other boat trips that go out to an island rather than to a beach with no road — Dia island off Heraklion, home along with Theodorou and Agii Pandes to the kri-kri wild goats covered in Crete’s wildlife, or the summer-only crossing to Chrissi island near Ierapetra — but none of them carry Spinalonga’s weight of recent history, and treating this particular crossing the same way as those does the place a disservice.

Because after the Venetians left and the Ottomans held it for a time, Spinalonga became something else entirely: from 1903 to 1957, it was a leprosy colony — the last one in Europe to close. For more than half a century, people diagnosed with Hansen’s disease were sent here, sometimes by their own families, and lived out full lives on an islet a few hundred metres across. They built houses, ran shops, held elections for their own council, fell in love, raised what family life the isolation allowed. Some healed and returned to the mainland once treatment improved in the 1940s and 50s. Many stayed, married, and are buried on the islet itself.

Recent enough to have names attached

What unsettles me, in a useful way, every time I go back is the arithmetic. 1957 is not ancient history. It is within the lifetime of people who are still alive today, and well within the living memory of their children. In villages around the gulf — Kritsa among them — you will still occasionally hear a resident mention a relative, or a relative of a neighbour, who spent years on the island.

That is a different order of connection to the past than the Minoan ruins covered in Knossos and the Heraklion Museum and why Gortyna, not Knossos, was the Roman capital, or the Venetian sieges that still shape Chania’s and Rethymno’s old towns. Those are history you read about. This is history someone in the taverna where you eat dinner might still, quietly, remember.

That is why I find the brochure language around Spinalonga — “a magical boat trip,” “the mysterious island” — a little uncomfortable. It is not wrong to find the place atmospheric. It genuinely is. But the atmosphere comes from something specific: from ruined houses that were somebody’s actual home, from a small church where actual funerals were held, from a jetty where actual ferries once brought in supplies and post and, eventually, hope of a cure. Walking the lanes with that in mind changes the pace of the visit. I stop wanting to hurry to the best photo angle and start reading the information boards properly.

Readers chasing mainly a striking shot might prefer the more clear-eyed approach in photography spots in Crete, which treats a good picture and a rushed visit as two separate things. Treating the whole outing as a checklist stop is one of the gentler versions of the mistakes rounded up in mistakes to avoid in Crete, and the taverna dinner that follows deserves the same attention: what to eat in Crete turns a casual meal into another way of listening to the place.

Why everyone suddenly knows the name

If Spinalonga feels more famous than its size would suggest, that is largely down to one book. Victoria Hislop’s 2005 novel The Island imagines a family across several generations, some of whom live on the islet during the colony years, and it became a huge bestseller in Britain and then internationally, later adapted into a Greek television series. Before the novel, Spinalonga was known mostly to Cretans and to readers of local history.

After it, coach parties started arriving specifically because of the book, and the site’s popularity has not really dropped since. It is worth knowing this going in, because it explains the split in tone you will meet on any given visit: some people are there purely for the view, others are there because a novel about the colony moved them enough to want to see the real place. Both are welcome, but only one crowd tends to read the information panels.

Getting there without missing the point

Practically, three harbours run boats out to the islet, and which one you choose changes the trip more than people expect. Plaka, the small village directly opposite, gives the shortest crossing — a few minutes, nothing more — and the least ceremony about it, which some visitors actually prefer, since it leaves more of the visit for the island itself rather than the boat.

Boats also run from Elounda, a slightly longer crossing with wider lagoon views, and from Agios Nikolaos, the longest option, usually bundled with commentary and sometimes a stop elsewhere in the gulf. None of the three is more “authentic” than another; they simply trade crossing time for scenery and narration. I go into the differences properly, including which one suits a family with young kids and which suits someone who wants quiet, in a separate guide to choosing a boat.

However you arrive, budget at least ninety minutes on the islet itself. There is a marked route past the fortress walls, the former hospital, the church, and the row of houses along the main lane, and rushing it in the time it takes to walk from the fortress gate to the first ruin defeats the purpose of coming at all. A fuller walkthrough, with the layout and what each building was, is in the complete Spinalonga guide.

Most people reach this stretch of coast by flying into Heraklion, still the busier of the island’s two main gateways — the Heraklion airport guide lays out the drive east, which takes under ninety minutes on a good day past the old Venetian walls where Nikos Kazantzakis is buried, a detail covered in Kazantzakis and Zorba in Heraklion. Travelling in from the mainland rather than by air is also realistic here: the overnight boats covered in ferries from Piraeus to Crete land close enough to the gulf of Mirabello that Spinalonga can reasonably be a first full day rather than something saved for the end of the trip.

Once on the ground, most visitors reach Plaka, Elounda or Agios Nikolaos by renting a car in Crete, since the coast road east from Heraklion is straightforward and the notes in driving in Crete cover the parts of it that catch newcomers out. Anyone without a car can still make it work: the KTEL bus network runs often enough along this stretch to reach any of the three harbours without a rental.

The islet itself offers almost no shade, and the crowds thicken fastest between late morning and early afternoon, so anyone visiting in the hottest stretch of summer is better off going at opening time or late in the day. The seasonal notes in Crete in July and the meltemi explain why that same period cancels boats out to Balos or Chrissi more often than it touches the short, sheltered crossing here. Outside summer the crossing keeps a different rhythm too, and what closes in Crete in winter is worth checking before counting on any particular harbour to be running.

A hat, proper shoes rather than sandals, and water bought before boarding matter more than most guidebooks let on, since the lanes between the former houses are uneven and occasionally steep near the fortress gate — the general advice in what to pack for Crete applies here as much as on a mountain trail. Anyone travelling with limited mobility should read accessible Crete before booking a crossing rather than after, since none of the three harbours make the cobbled paths any easier once you are on the islet.

If you are based around Agios Nikolaos with only a single free morning, the real decision is not whether to see Spinalonga at all, but what to pair it with. A slower option folds in a walk around Lake Voulismeni and the old town after the boat gets back; a more ambitious one pushes on the same afternoon to the Lasithi plateau and the Dikteon cave.

Both are genuinely doable in one day given how short the crossing is, which is more than the pace either deserves. For anyone planning further ahead, Lasithi and the east in three days and the wider east Crete four-day itinerary both build the visit in without turning it into a rushed stop between two other sights.

Visitors arriving for the day on a cruise ship face a tighter version of the same choice, covered practically in shore excursions from a cruise ship, with the fuller one day in Crete from a cruise ship itinerary showing how Spinalonga fits around a single port call. Anyone who would rather not juggle boats and timings alone can also look at private tours and drivers in Crete, which cover this route along with several others.

Families weighing whether the visit suits younger children can check Crete with kids, which flags the same two things that catch most parents out here: no real shade, and ground too uneven for a buggy.

Elsewhere on the island’s harder history

Spinalonga is not the only place in Crete where twentieth-century history sits closer to the surface than the Minoan palaces or Venetian harbours that fill most brochures. The German invasion of 1941 and the years of occupation and resistance that followed left cemeteries, memorials and oral histories across the island, and travellers who find Spinalonga’s recentness affecting often want to follow that thread further. That same closeness to living memory runs through the Battle of Crete in the villages, where accounts of the German occupation are still passed down as family history rather than textbook fact.

The 1579 fortress that first gives Spinalonga its silhouette belongs to the same wave of coastal defence as Koules fortress and the Venetian walls in Heraklion, part of the era covered in Venetian Crete, 1204 to 1669, three and a half centuries before the leprosy colony gave the islet its harder history. Readers who want the fuller wartime picture beyond the colony years can follow it through the Battle of Crete and the parallel account in Cretan resistance and the war cemeteries, both of which sit closer to living memory than most of what fills Crete’s other brochures.

If that is you, a guided look at the two-day Battle of Crete tour or a focused WWII historical tour of the battle sites covers ground the leprosy colony’s story does not, while a battlefield archaeology tour of the 1941 campaign goes further still into what is still being found in the ground.

For a different day out that mixes a private itinerary with a major historical site on the other side of the island, a private day trip from Souda Bay to Knossos Palace is worth knowing about even though it sits far from Elounda. None of these substitute for standing on Spinalonga itself, but together they round out a version of Crete that is more than gorges and beaches.

I still think Spinalonga is one of the best half-days you can spend on this island. I just think it deserves to be visited as what it is: not a ruin to photograph, but a place where an entire, difficult, ordinary community lived, within memory that has not yet fully passed.

Spinalonga’s leper colony: your questions

When was Spinalonga a leper colony?

Spinalonga operated as a leprosy colony from 1903 until 1957. It was the last leper colony to close in Europe, meaning people diagnosed with the disease still lived on the islet within the lifetimes of people alive today.

Was Spinalonga always a leper colony?

No. The Venetians built the fortress on Spinalonga in 1579 to defend the approach to Agios Nikolaos, and it later passed to Ottoman control before the leprosy colony was established in 1903. The fortress function came first, by more than three centuries.

What boat should I take to Spinalonga?

Plaka offers the shortest crossing, only a few minutes, with little formality. Elounda and Agios Nikolaos run longer boats, often with commentary; Agios Nikolaos is the longest option and sometimes combines the trip with other stops in the gulf.

Is Spinalonga based on a true story?

Spinalonga’s colony was real, and Victoria Hislop’s 2005 novel The Island is fiction built around that real history. The book’s popularity is a major reason the site is now widely known outside Greece, though the historical colony existed independently of it.

How long do you need to visit Spinalonga?

Plan at least ninety minutes on the islet itself to walk the fortress walls, the former hospital area, the church and the row of former houses without rushing, plus the boat crossing on either side.

Can you still see the leper colony buildings on Spinalonga?

Yes. Many of the former houses, the hospital building, shops and the small church remain along the islet’s main lane, with information boards explaining what each building was used for during the colony years.

Are there descendants of Spinalonga’s residents still alive?

Some former residents of the colony, and their children, are still alive today, and family memories of the island are still shared in communities around the gulf of Mirabello, including villages such as Kritsa.