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The Ionian Islands extend from the coast of southern Albania to the northwest coast of the Peloponnesus. The group, combined by administrative rather than geographic logic, includes many uninhabited rocks and islets as well as four large islands--[[Corfu]] (Kerkira), Leucas (LefkasLefkada), Cephalonia (Kefallinia), and Zacynthus (Zakynthos)--each of which, together with the smaller islands surrounding it, is governed as a separate province. Altogether, the Ionian Islands comprise 1.8 percent of Greece's land area.
The largest island, Cephalonia [[Kefallinia]] (746 square kilometers), is due west of the Gulf of Patras, which separates the western Peloponnesus from the mainland. Mountainous and rocky, Cephalonia and its smaller neighbor Ithaca (Ithaki) grow mainly olives and currants. Thirty centuries ago, Ithaca was the homeland to which the legendary Homeric voyager Odysseus sought to return after the [[Trojan War]].
[[Corfu]] (Kerkira) is the northernmost of the main islands, lying off the coast of Albanian (Northern) Epirus and [[Epirus|Greek Epirus]]. Corfu, with an area of 593 square kilometers, is dominated in the north by a mountain range that virtually severs its northern coastal plain from the territory to the south. The fertile southern lowland is cultivated intensively to grow olives, figs, citrus fruits, and grapes.
Settled by colonists from Euboea in the eighth century B.C., Corfu had a sporadically independent existence during the citystate era, participating on various sides in the wars among citystates in the fifth century and fourth century B.C. In the two millennia that followed, the strategic location of Corfu between Greece and Italy caused it to change hands many times; the capital city, [[Kerkira]], contains a citadel built by the Venetians in 1550. The island was finally ceded by the British to Greece in 1864.
