The Isle of Spinalonga – meaning “long thorn” in Italian (official name Kalidon) – is located in the eastern part of Crete, near to the town of Elounda.  In 1579, the Venetians built a fortress on Spinalonga over the ruins of an acropolis and kept control until the Ottoman Empire took possession of it in 1715. The island is notable for being one of the last active leper colonies in Europe, being used as leprosarium from 1903 until 1957.

One of the most famous and rare Byzantine monument in Crete (13th-14th A.D.), is located in Logari one kilometer east of Kritsa, is the triple-nave Byzantine church called “Panaghia Kera” (Our Lady Virgin Mary) dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, to Saint Anthony and Saint Anna.  Adorned with superb frescoes and it is strongly recommended for a visit.

The history of the name ‘Spinalonga’ is in itself subject to conjecture, but it is widely accepted that its roots lie somewhere in the Olous, Orlando, Elounda location and the word meaning long and thorny. Spinalonga is actually the name of the sizeable but slender peninsula and on maps, the small island is identifiable by the name Kalidon.

Acquired from the Byzantine Empire at the start of the thirteenth century Spinalonga was to become a crucial part of the Venetian Powerbase on Crete for the next four centuries. Huge fortifications still dominate this tiny but strategically important dot on the map.

Such was the natural isolation and man-made defenses of this tiny island that it managed to hold out against the Ottoman Empire for almost fifty years (from 1669 to 1715) after the fall of the rest of Crete into Turkish hands. From 1715 until the turn of the twentieth century it was held by the occupying Ottomans and populated by civilians.

The island is probably best known to the wider world for its twentieth-century role as an isolated community of leprosy sufferers, a function that it fulfilled from 1903 up until 1957. This, however, is only one phase of a lengthy and varied history. Many of Spinalonga’s most striking features, the massive fortifications, date back five centuries or more to the Venetian occupation. Beginning to understand the past and the significance of Spinalonga at times, it is important to appreciate its geographic position in relation to the rest of Crete’s north east coastline.

If you use the Spinalonga satellite map and zoom out you can easily tell how crucial a strategic position the island occupies. Its location guards the entrance to the shallow and relatively sheltered bay on which Plaka and Schisma (Elounda ‘town center’) sit. Along with ‘Big’ Spinalonga, or Spinalonga peninsula, it marks the edge of a shelf where the land falls away into the deep waters of the north Mirabello bay. With major walls, fortifications, cannon emplacements, and battlements the Venetians were able to command naval control over any ships passing to the north or south of Spinalonga into these shallow waters. The bay it protects has two main residential settlements on its shores. Plaka sits directly opposite Spinalonga and Elounda, a far more populous area, is at the southern end of the bay. At the far southern end of the bay, the small causeway is bisected by a narrow canal suitable only for open fishing boats. All large commercial and trip boats must enter and exit the bay at the northern entrance, past Spinalonga. Mirabello Bay, into which the canal gives access, is a large bay on the northeast coast of Crete. Its sweeping curved coastline almost forms two-thirds of a circle and Mirabello itself offers a safe haven for large ships in extreme weather even today.

Crete’s earliest cities date back over four thousand years to the early Minoans and it is impossible that they wouldn’t have utilized the parts of Spinalona peninsula and the island that were above the waves back then to their greatest advantage. Constant seismic activity in the Aegean has ensured that the features visible today would not have been familiar to the first inhabitants of Crete

Although there is no visible Minoan or Dorian remains on the island, the wider Spinalonga area would have been of great strategic importance to even the earliest settlers on Crete. By the third century BC the city of Olous, now buried under the silt and seas south of the causeway, had become a regional powerhouse with militaristic tendencies akin to those of its near neighbors Lato and Oxa, all three been frequently involved in local struggles, alliances, and entities. Ruins of an ancient acropolis from this period are purported to lie under the huge Venetian fortifications.

The earliest major structures visible on the island today are still its most striking and substantial. During the lengthy Venetian occupation of Crete, huge fortifications were built at different levels on Spinalonga. Huge stone battlements and gun emplacements ensured total control of the waters, giving access to the tiny bay. High walls and natural features turned the island into an impenetrable fortress, home to the troops that defended it.

The next wave of inhabitants came during the Ottoman occupation and it is the shops and residences from this period that form the majority of the buildings on the west coast which is somewhat sheltered, facing across to Plaka. The east side of the island has few structures except fortifications and a chapel and is open to the winds of the Aegean sea.

By the twentieth century, many of the old Ottoman buildings had been reopened to house the region’s inhabitants suffering from leprosy. Houses and structures that were hundreds of years old had an arrest placed on their decline as those exiled to the island forged a dignified community out of shared affliction in a decaying place. Although none would have chosen to be confined in such a tiny place village life did continue and the twentieth century’s technology reached across the water. Modern dormitories were built during this period; these are the large concrete buildings to the north of the church and Ottoman period buildings. For the first time visitor probably one of the most poignant sections of a circuit of the island is right at the very end. Just before descending from the walls back down to the landing stage the visitor has to pass the twentieth-century cemetery, the final resting place of many sufferers of the disease. Its views to the open sea may be glorious on a summer afternoon, but only if you are free to leave.

The island of Spinalonga has been uninhabited since 1962 when the last priest had remembered the fifth anniversary of the last resident death and burial on the island in 1957.