What Is Ithaca Known For?

Ithaca carries the name of Odysseus's home from Homer's Odyssey, though scholars have spent well over two thousand years debating whether the island bearing that name today is actually the place the poet meant.

Ithaca is known first for that Homeric identity, an association ancient inhabitants themselves believed and inscribed in stone as far back as the final centuries BCE. Since 1994, archaeologists from the University of Ioannina have excavated a site called Agios Athanasios, also known as the School of Homer, in the island's north, uncovering a Mycenaean-style megaron, stone stairways cut into the cliff, and a corbelled well dating to the Late Bronze Age. A 2026 account from the excavation's leader described inscribed roof tiles and a small bronze bust as strong evidence that the complex functioned as the Odysseion, the long-sought sanctuary dedicated to Odysseus himself.

The identification isn't universally settled, though. Homer describes his Ithaca as low-lying and the westernmost island in its group, details that don't quite match the real, mountainous Ithaca, since that westernmost position actually belongs to neighboring Kefalonia. Early 20th century archaeologist Wilhelm Döerpfeld argued instead for Lefkada, and more recently, classicist James Diggle and geologist John Underhill have proposed that Homer's Ithaca corresponds to Paliki, a peninsula on Kefalonia, drawing on new geological research from the University of Aberdeen.

Regardless of where the debate eventually lands, Ithaca's own residents have treated the Odysseus connection as genuine heritage for millennia, weaving the hero into local ritual and identity long before modern archaeology arrived to test the claim, connecting the island by ferry to Kefalonia and Lefkada.