Sami, Cephalonia

Where it sits. Sami is the principal port on the east coast of Cephalonia, facing the narrow strait that separates the island from Ithaca, whose hills stand four kilometres across the water and dominate every view from the seafront. The town lies at the head of a wide bay with a limestone amphitheatre behind it, and it functions as the island's mainland link: ferries run to Patras and to Astakos on the Acarnanian coast, and a short crossing serves Piso Aetos on Ithaca. About 1,000 people live in the town, with roughly 5,000 in the surrounding municipality, and the rhythm is set by ferry arrivals rather than by tourism.

Ancient Same. The two hills immediately above the town, known collectively as Palaiokastro, carry the remains of Same, one of the four city-states of classical Cephalonia and the one that held out longest against Rome. The Romans besieged it for four months in 189 BC before taking and sacking it. Long stretches of the circuit wall survive in Cyclopean masonry, together with cisterns, tower footings and the outline of an acropolis, and the walk up from the town takes about forty minutes on a marked path. Down in the plain, a Roman villa excavated in the 1990s preserves geometric floor mosaics under a modern shelter, and a small archaeological collection displays material from both periods.

Rebuilt twice over. Sami as it stands is a young town in old clothes. The Ionian earthquake of 12 August 1953 flattened it almost completely, as it did most of Cephalonia, and the reconstruction was quick, low and functional — two- and three-storey concrete blocks along a straight waterfront, with the pre-war fabric surviving only in fragments. Visitors arriving from Fiskardo or Assos, both of which kept or restored their older architecture, often find the contrast jarring. The seafront was landscaped in the 2000s, and the row of tavernas and cafes facing the ferry quay is where the town spends its evenings.

On screen. Sami is the reason Captain Corelli's Mandolin looks the way it does. When John Madden shot the adaptation of the Louis de Bernières novel here in 2000, with Nicolas Cage and Penélope Cruz, the 1940s Argostoli of the story no longer existed — the earthquake had removed it — so the production built a full period village set on the Sami waterfront, complete with facades, a square and a quayside, and worked in it for the bulk of the shoot. The Italian garrison camp scenes were staged around the corner at Antisamos, the pebble bay four kilometres east over the headland, and the road out to it was improved for the production and has served beachgoers ever since. The set was dismantled after filming; what remains is the geography, which is recognisable from the quay. The events beneath the fiction happened here too: after the Italian capitulation in September 1943 thousands of men of the Acqui Division were executed on Cephalonia, and memorials on the island mark the killings.

Caves and water. The karst around Sami is the best in the Ionian. Melissani, two kilometres north-west, is a cavern whose roof collapsed in antiquity, leaving a brackish lake open to the sky; visitors are rowed around it in small boats, and when the sun stands directly overhead the water turns an implausible blue and the boat appears to float in mid-air. The lake is fed by seawater that enters the island fifteen kilometres away at the Katavothres sinkholes near Argostoli — a connection proved by dye-tracing experiments in the 1960s. Drogarati, four kilometres south-west, is a dry stalactite chamber of considerable size with acoustics good enough that concerts and recitals are staged in its main hall. Antisamos, beyond the eastern headland, is a white-pebble bay backed by wooded slopes, one of the greenest beach settings on the island.

Getting there and timing. Ferries from Patras take about three hours and from Astakos about two and a half, arriving directly at the town quay; Kefalonia airport near Argostoli is 40 minutes away by road. Buses connect to Argostoli several times a day, less often to Fiskardo. Cruise ships tender into the bay in summer, which briefly multiplies the population and fills the cave sites, so an early start at Melissani matters between June and September. The town makes a practical base for the east of the island: Agia Efimia is ten minutes north, Myrtos about forty minutes across the mountain, Fiskardo an hour. May, June, September and October give warm water, open kitchens and quiet roads; in winter Sami keeps working as a port, but most visitor facilities close and the rain that keeps Cephalonia green arrives in earnest.