Panteli with Platanos and Agia marina is the more important
places in Leros. Agia Marina located in bottom of a
deep hill of the coast of Alinda gulf . The place is dominated from the castle of
Panagia build
partly from the knights of Rhodes right over Pandeli. Platanos very near from
Agia Marina is the place where the city hall is, the post office and other
public services banks and shops. Following the road towards Lakki after 100
meters from the taxi station you can turn left to Panteli, the same road goes up
the Castle. Platanos and Panteli are the centers of the social life, with many stores
and a cafeteria and souvlaki shops on the public square of Platanos that is a meeting
place for the tasting of a
frappe coffee or a beer with souvlaki and for a pause under the shadow of the
Plane tree , that it gives the name to the
place and that is replaced now by a younger tree. Here use to be the Leros
Leski (the Leros club). Pandeli, the
village of the fishermen, is today one of the most visited resorts in Leros,
with restaurants and small cafés , fishing boats and fishermen with their nets
composing one of the most picturesque village in Greece, a nice beach sand and
pebble beach with umbrellas and sun beds. Panteli it might have not the
Athens nightlife
but it has the Savana bar with very good music open until the early morning the
Castelo with soft music and amazing sea view and many fish taverns and ouzeri. Krithoni,
located half road between Agia Marina and Alinda and has some nice
accommodation and hotels. Alinda,
is the most touristy area of the island with many hotels, rooms and other
accommodations, the only problem is the narrow beach and the cars and bikes
passing by from the main road that goes through Alinda to the less crowded
beaches of Panagies and Dyo Lisgaria where a lot of the young people of the island
visit at night or day and where some times beach parties are organised in the
Leros bar Zefyros. A small ethnographic museum is accommodated in the Belenis
tower, in this zone are numerous restaurants and hotels with
beautiful villas on the hill . Panagies and more a head the dyo Lisgaria are two bays of great beauty
and until some year ago where accessible only by feet . Today there
is an asphalt road and there have been rendered more touristy . Lakki lies
on the
south western coast . It is the main port and landing place of the ships that arrive from
Athens Greece. It is a remarkable natural jewel: a natural bay with the perfect shape
of ring, not visible port from the external coast of the island. To the time
of the Italian occupation it was an important well known naval base with the name of Portolago,
where beyond to the military equipments was a fine example of the
Italian Rationalism
architectural style that some buildings have also in other dodecanese
islands. After
decades of abandonment, the city's structure with its architecture has found again
splendour and recognized as one of the more important
works from the Modern Movement in architecture. Lakki was constructed
according the architectonic of Mussolini's fascist era and it is impressive to disembark
from the ship and to have to believe of being in a Greek island. The
church of Saint john Evangelist has some beautiful mosaic of the Byzantine era. In Lakki a
convent of Italian nuns had a center where have received in the school the children
of the island during the Italian occupation teaching them also the Italian language: it
is not rare to be able to speak Italian with the old ones that remembers the
nuns with affection being those who protected them after
1943 when the bay of Lakki was transformed in a
war port with the arrival of the
Germans.In 1940 as Italy was on the side of Germany, Leros suffered attacks and bombing by the British Royal Air Force. As a result of the naturally protected coves and the protection they provided to warships, the island was the second most bombed during World War Two (after Crete) and the battle of Leros was historic. On 8 September 1943, as Italy could not continue the war on the German side, it signed an armistice and came over to the Allied camp. After the Italian armistice, British reinforcements arrived on Leros and the island suffered continuous German bombing. One of the largest attacks was on the Greek Navy's Flagship, the Queen Olga, sunk by German bombers on Sunday September 26, 1943. The British Royal Navy ship, HMS Intrepid, was also sunk on that day in Lakki.
On the 7 March 1948, Leros as with all the Dodecanese Greek islands, was reunited with the rest of Greece. After approximately 400 years the Dodecanese became officially Greek once more. During the post-war years the Greek governments used many buildings in Leros for various reasons. In 1959 the mental hospital of Leros was founded, whose original primitive conditions have been improved to such an extent that today it is considered a model for the reformation of psychiatric care in the whole of Greece and Europe. The calm island of Leros in Greece does not have a very intense and lively nightlife like other Greek islands see Mykonos or Santorini, but you will find good shops in Leros and restaurants.Car rentals and tile shops Leros hotels and apartments also if you are looking for real estate for sale is one of the best islands, there are hotels in Laki open all year like the hotel Miramare.However, a few clubs and bars are available in the harbour of Agia Marina (one of the three settlement forming the capital of the island) and in the touristy beach resort of Alinda. In Panteli you will find accommodation in traditional Leros apartments with amazing views to the beach the wind mills and the castle one of the best cafeterias of Leros is Castelo in Panteli beach. All bars and clubs are open until dawn and propose various kinds of music. With the exception of the castle built by the Knights of St. John, the ruins of an ancient temple, believed to be a temple of Artemis, and a few churches, Leros does not offer much of great cultural interest. However, in combination with the surrounding islands of Kalymnos, Lipsi and Patmos the visitor can have a varied cultural experience. The easy access via hydrofoil and ferries, are ideal for interesting day trips unfortunately Leros does not have connections with the north Aegean islands of Chios and Lesvos. Leros has daily ferry connections from Piraeus Greece and flights to Athens from Leros airport..