Boat Day Trips Spinalonga

Here, on an island where lepers from Crete  and the rest of Greece had been kept in isolation until 1957, a story about love and pain, separation and fear was born.

Although it is small and known as the island of the outcasts, Spinalonga has a rather interesting story to tell. The island forms a natural defence ?mechanism? for Elounda harbour, and in 1579 the Venetians built a mighty fortress here on the ruins of an ancient acropolis. The Venetians kept control of the island even after the rest of Crete fell to the Ottomans in 1669 and it remained under their control for almost another half a century until its capitulation in 1715. Today thousands of tourists visit Spinalonga by boat from Ayios Nikolaos, Elounda and Plaka each summer as it is the most popular archaeological site in Crete after Knossos .