😉 Greetings to regular readers, travel and story lovers! Spinalonga is the island of lepers in Greece. It is near Crete, in the Mirabello Bay, north of the villages of Elounda and Plaka. From 1903 to 1957, the world famous leprasorium was located here.
Do not be alarmed, this island is now uninhabited. Except for tourists who have the desire and interest to explore the unique island, there is no one here for a long time.
Spinalonga Island
This sad place has its own history. In ancient times, the island was called Calydon, and after the capture by the Venetians, it changed its name.
“Spinalonga” means “long thorn” (from Italian). Apparently, this name is associated with a certain shape of the island. In those early days, the island served as an impregnable fortress that controlled the entrance to the Gulf of Elounda.
In 1669, Crete was captured by the Ottoman Empire. The Venetians retained control over the island until 1715, then the Turks became its masters. The Greeks decided to drive out the invaders and decided to send lepers to the island, who were collected from all over Greece. The frightened Turks left the island.
Spinalonga Island
Since 1903, it was decided to place all the lepers in one place – on the island of Spinalonga. The houses abandoned by the Turks came in handy.
After 10 years, Crete became part of Greece and the leper colony became international. Patients from other countries and Europe were taken here. The number of patients on the island is 1000 people!
They were led into the outcast fortress through a curved tunnel, which they called “Dante’s Gate, like in hell. Those who ended up in the last shelter had no hope of returning back.
Help: leprosy is a painful and terrible disease. Chronic infectious disease caused by mycobacteria. It affects the skin of the face, hands and feet, the peripheral nervous system, and the upper respiratory tract. The mechanism of infection has not yet been precisely established.
Leprosy slowly devoured the human body, perverted its appearance. The disease did not distinguish between young and old, beautiful and ugly. Previously, people were insanely afraid of contracting leprosy. Therefore, lepers had to wear tinkling bells so that healthy people could distance themselves from them.
Island life
At first, conditions for the inhabitants of the island were dire. Slums, poverty, lack of medicine and hope. Many died from the wildest pains, disfigured and forgotten by everyone. The “islanders” received a meager monthly allowance, which was not enough for food and medicine.
It is surprising that the sick people on the island did not let their hands go. One brave priest, being healthy, voluntarily shared his life with lepers. He conducted services in the Church of St. Panteleimon, which was built by the sick.
To improve their lives, outlaws organized hairdressing salons and coffee shops on the island. We caught fish and did gardening.
In 1936, the patient Epaminondas Remundakis, a law student, arrived on the island. He founded the “Brotherhood of the Sick of Spinalonga” and set about improving the living conditions of the sick.
He convinced the inhabitants of the island that no one from the outside would be able to help them to equip their last refuge on this piece of land.
They are not guests here, but hosts. There is simply no other choice! Soon the island was put in order. They began to sweep the streets, opened a ring road, and built a theater. Life has become like the life of normal people.
Long-awaited medicine
12 years later, a drug was discovered in America to treat the leprosy virus. The number of patients on the island began to decrease. Some of the recovered managed to return home. The seriously ill were transported to the St. Barbara infectious diseases hospital in Egaleo.
After the departure of the last patients in 1957, this part of the land was abandoned and remained without inhabitants for several decades. Historical monuments have fallen into disrepair. Most of the buildings were completely destroyed.
Hundreds of tourists visit the former leprasorium every day. But this is a place with bad energy. After all, each stone is saturated with tears, suffering, pain, a sense of doom and hopelessness. There is deep sadness in everything.
More information in this documentary “Island of the Lepers in Greece”. The impressionable and the faint of heart should not be looked at.
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