Italian invasion, German occupation, civil war, and a devastating earthquake, all in little more than one 20th-century decade… Kefalonia has certainly had its share of troubles. The island’s wartime travails were recorded in the novel and film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which did much to put Kefalonia holidays on the map. From its capital Argosteli, sitting on a large southern bay, to Skala in the south-east and Sami on the east coast, the island’s towns owe their fresh, newly-minted look to that 1953 earthquake. Fiskardo in the north, was relatively untouched, and has a little more history. Kefalonia (sometimes also spelled Cephalonia) is a big island: despite a burgeoning tourist industry, it never seems crowded.