The History of Spinalonga's Leper Colony
How the Venetian fortress became Greece's last leper colony, the community the residents built, its closure in 1957, and Victoria Hislop's novel The Island.
Spinalonga's most powerful story is its half-century as a leprosy quarantine settlement — Greece's last leper colony — from 1903 to 1957. Behind the massive Venetian walls of a fortress built in 1579, people diagnosed with Hansen's disease, cut off by the water, built a real community with a main street, shops, a hospital and a church. The island's story reached a worldwide audience through Victoria Hislop's novel The Island. This guide, written to inform and to honour the people who lived here, covers how the colony came to be, the life the residents made, how and why it closed, and how the novel brought the island to the world — a human story approached with respect, not spectacle.
How did Spinalonga become a leper colony?
Spinalonga became a leprosy colony in 1903, when the Cretan authorities designated the fortified island as a place to care for and separate people with leprosy, then an incurable and greatly feared disease. The island was well suited to the purpose of the time: ringed by the strong Venetian walls of 1579 and cut off from the mainland by the sea, it offered the isolation that early-twentieth-century medicine believed necessary to contain the illness. The last Muslim families who had lived within the fortress under Ottoman rule departed, and the buildings they left behind became the first homes of the new community. Over the following years, people diagnosed with leprosy were brought to Spinalonga first from across Crete and, after the island's incorporation into the Greek state, from the wider country.
For those sent there, arrival was a wrenching separation from family and former life, and the disease itself carried a heavy stigma. Yet the choice of Spinalonga also gave the residents something unusual: a whole island of their own, with the space, the buildings and, over time, the autonomy to shape their own community rather than live confined to a hospital ward. Understanding this beginning — a feared disease, the medicine of the age, and a ready-made fortress island — is the key to reading the ruins you walk through today, and to appreciating both the hardship the residents faced and the remarkable life they went on to build behind the old walls.
What was life like in the colony?
Life in the Spinalonga colony was far more than the isolation the name 'leper colony' suggests. Behind the Venetian walls the residents built and sustained a genuine community, with a main street lined by shops and small businesses, cafés, a laundry, a hospital and the church of Agios Panteleimon at its heart. People married, raised families where they could, ran services for one another and governed much of their daily life themselves. New arrivals, some of them educated and resourceful, helped organise the community, press for better conditions, and bring a sense of dignity and normal life to an island that the outside world had written off. Walking the colony's street today, past the homes and public buildings, you can still read this everyday life in the layout of the place.
That is not to romanticise what was, especially in the early years, a hard and often desperate existence. Medical care was limited, supplies depended on boats from the mainland, and the residents lived with illness, loss and the pain of separation from family. But conditions improved over the decades, particularly after the island came under fuller state administration and, later, as treatment advanced. The story of Spinalonga is therefore a double one — of suffering and stigma on one hand, and of resilience, solidarity and community on the other — and the most honest accounts of the island hold both together. Our concierge recommendation is to walk the streets slowly and let the ordinary details, the shopfronts and the church, speak of the lives lived here, not only of the disease.
When and why did the colony close?
The Spinalonga colony closed in 1957, brought to an end by the advance of medicine. In the years after the Second World War, effective drug treatments for leprosy — notably the sulphone drugs — transformed the disease from an incurable sentence into a treatable condition, and the strict isolation that had justified places like Spinalonga was no longer medically necessary. As residents were cured or could be treated in ordinary hospitals, the population of the island dwindled, and the colony was finally dissolved, its remaining residents leaving the island that had been their home. Spinalonga was among the last leprosy colonies in Europe to close, marking the end of an era in the treatment of the disease.
For a time after the closure the island stood largely empty and quiet, its buildings slowly weathering, a poignant reminder of the community that had lived there. The church of Agios Panteleimon continued to be a focus of memory, and the island was recognised as a monument for its layered history. In the decades since, Spinalonga has been cared for as a heritage site, its Venetian fortifications and colony buildings conserved and opened to visitors. The closure of the colony was, above all, a story of hope — the moment medicine caught up with a disease that had caused so much fear and suffering — and that note of release is part of what visitors carry away from the island today, alongside the memory of those who lived out their lives behind its walls.
How did Victoria Hislop's The Island make Spinalonga famous?
Spinalonga's story reached a global audience in 2005 with the publication of The Island, a novel by the British writer Victoria Hislop. The book follows several generations of a Cretan family whose fortunes are entwined with the leprosy colony, weaving the real history of Spinalonga into a moving family saga. It became an international best-seller, was translated into many languages, and was adapted into a hugely popular Greek television series, To Nisi. Almost overnight, an island that had been little known outside Crete became one of the region's most visited monuments, as readers around the world sought out the real place behind the story they had come to love.
The novel's success has shaped how many people experience Spinalonga today. A large share of visitors arrive having read The Island or seen the series, and walking the colony's main street, the church and the tunnel of Dante's Gate gives the fiction a powerful physical reality. Reading the book before a trip to Crete is one of the best ways to prepare, deepening the meaning of what can otherwise look like simple ruins. At the same time, it is worth holding on to the distinction between the fiction and the history: the novel is inspired by real events but is not a documentary, and behind it lie the real, individual lives of the island's residents. The most rewarding way to visit is to let the novel draw you in, then to honour the true story of the people who lived on Spinalonga.
Frequently asked
When was Spinalonga a leper colony?
From 1903 until 1957. For over half a century the fortified island served as a leprosy quarantine settlement — Greece's last leper colony — and one of the last in Europe to close, ending only when effective drug treatments for leprosy made isolation unnecessary.
Why was Spinalonga chosen for the colony?
Because the island, ringed by strong Venetian walls of 1579 and cut off by the sea, offered the isolation that early-twentieth-century medicine believed was needed to contain leprosy. The empty fortress buildings also gave the new community ready-made homes.
What was life like in the colony?
Harder than a resort but far richer than the name suggests: behind the walls the residents built a real community with a main street of shops, a hospital and the church of Agios Panteleimon, running much of their daily life themselves with dignity and solidarity.
Why did the colony close in 1957?
Because medicine had caught up with the disease. Effective drug treatments for leprosy after the Second World War made strict isolation unnecessary; residents were cured or treated in ordinary hospitals, and the colony was dissolved — a story that ends in hope.
Is Spinalonga the island in Victoria Hislop's book?
Yes. Spinalonga is the real island at the heart of Victoria Hislop's 2005 best-seller The Island and the Greek TV series based on it, which follow a Cretan family bound up with the colony. The novel brought the island's story to a worldwide audience.
How should I approach the colony history on a visit?
With respect. This is a real place where real people lived and died. Let the audio history and the site's signs give you the human background, walk the streets and cemetery thoughtfully, and treat the buildings as memory rather than spectacle.