Lefkáda: East and South Coast

The east coast of Lefkáda is green and bedecked with beaches. Just a few kilometres south of Lefkáda Town at Kaligóni, on a hill near the shore, are the scant ruins of ancient Nerikus, the pre-Corinthian city where in 1901 German archaeologists Edmund Krüger and Wilhelm Dörpfeld found Cyclopean walls, traces of roads, arches, a water tank, and traces of a 4th century BC theatre, as well as early Byzantine ruins, visible after some scrambling through the olives.

Krüger and Dörpfeld covered up all traces of the theatre, but recently archaeologists have excavated it, and impressive it is, too. The only known ancient theatre on an Ionian island, it overlooks the coastal plain and channel, once site of the ancient city, founded by the Corinthians. The seats, the orchestra, and the retaining wall of the stage. It seems as if it was never completed; as is, it could seat 3,500 spectactors.