Asos

Where it sits. Asos — commonly written Assos in English and on Cephalonian road signs — is a village of a few dozen houses on the west coast of the island, roughly 36 kilometres north of Argostoli and ten south of Fiskardo. Its site is unusual enough to be worth describing carefully: a hilly peninsula juts west into the Ionian, joined to the island by an isthmus only a couple of hundred metres across, and the village occupies the eastern side of that isthmus, wrapped around a small sheltered harbour. The result is a place with sea on both sides, a headland rising behind it to about 170 metres, and a Venetian fortress ringing the summit. The approach road descends from the main Argostoli–Fiskardo route in a series of hairpins, and the view from the last of them, straight down onto the red roofs and the harbour, is one of the most reproduced images of the Ionian Islands.

The fortress. Venice began building the castle in 1593, after repeated Ottoman raiding made the northern half of Cephalonia untenable, and it functioned as the administrative seat of the north for the following two centuries. What survives is one of the largest fortified enclosures in the Ionian: a circuit of walls close to two kilometres long enclosing some forty hectares of hillside, with a gateway bearing the Lion of Saint Mark, the remains of the Venetian governor's residence, a Catholic church, cisterns and barracks now half-swallowed by scrub and cypress. Under British rule in the nineteenth century the fortress served as a prison, a use that continued into the twentieth century. There is no ticket office and no fixed opening time; the site is open ground, reached either by a cobbled path climbing steeply from the village in about half an hour or by a narrow road that loops round the back of the headland.

Nineteen fifty-three and the French square. The Ionian earthquake of 12 August 1953, magnitude 7.2, destroyed the great majority of buildings on Cephalonia and hit Asos hard. Reconstruction here was funded in significant part by France, and the villagers named their small waterfront square Plateia Parisiou — Paris Square — in acknowledgement; a plaque records the debt. That aid is the reason Asos looks the way it does today, rebuilt in the pre-earthquake idiom of pastel render, shuttered windows and tiled roofs rather than the flat concrete that went up in the towns. It is one of very few places on the island where the pre-war character was deliberately reconstructed instead of replaced.

On screen and off it. Asos appears on every Captain Corelli's Mandolin itinerary sold on Cephalonia, and the village trades cheerfully on the connection, but it is worth being accurate about what the 2001 production actually built and where. John Madden's crew constructed its 1940s village set on the waterfront at Sami on the east coast, because the real towns had been flattened in 1953 and could not double for themselves, and staged the Italian garrison camp at Antisamos bay nearby. The west coast, Asos and Myrtos among it, provided the landscape rather than the sets. The film's effect on this village was economic rather than cinematic: visitor numbers climbed sharply after 2001 and have stayed high.

What there is to do. Not a great deal, which is the appeal. The harbour has a shingle beach with a diving platform and clear, cold water; four or five tavernas sit on the quay under bougainvillea and serve the standard Ionian repertoire plus decent fish; a few small hotels and rooms occupy the slope above. The fortress walk is the day's main exertion, and it rewards an early start — the path is unshaded, the ground is loose in places, and the summit views take in the whole north-western coast, from the cliffs above Myrtos to the channel toward Lefkada. Sunset is watched from the isthmus, looking west over the open sea.

Getting there and timing. A car or scooter is effectively necessary: buses on the Argostoli–Fiskardo route stop at the junction on the main road, well above and outside the village, and the walk down and back is steep. Parking in the village is very limited and fills early in July and August, when Asos receives day traffic from the whole island and the single street can gridlock; arriving before ten or after five solves it. Fiskardo is fifteen minutes north, Myrtos ten minutes south, and Argostoli about fifty minutes. May and June bring wildflowers over the fortress hill and comfortable walking; September and October have the warmest sea. From November most of the tavernas close and the village returns to its handful of permanent residents.