Portolago (Lakki) – Mussolini’s Utopian Model Town on the Greek Island of Leros

 

 

When visiting a Greek island you probably expect to find white-washed walls, curving narrow streets, blue domed churches and maybe the occasional ancient ruin, right?

 Well, yes, all that can be found on Leros, the island of Artemis, Goddess of the hunt, inhabited since the 3rd millennium BC; just don’t expect to find it in the town of Lakki (Portolago), one of the most unusual places in Greece.

Lakki is a town of neoclassical facades and straight streets, not at all the kind of place you would expect to find on any Greek island or anywhere in Greece for that matter.

That’s because it isn’t Greek at all it was created by Italians!

It was originally commissioned in 1923 by the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, as his dream, Utopian model town with the name Portolago.

Lakki, a harbour town on the Dodecanese island of Leros, as it is seen today, is unique, a town in Greece like no other!

Sadly, few people know this place exists, not even the Greeks!

 

Why Mussolini Chose Leros

 

 

In 1821, after the Greek Revolution and nearly 400 years of Ottoman rule, Leros, was declared, by the London Deed on the 3rd February 1830, to be part of the Greek state, as were all the Dodecanese islands.

However, that did not last long; with the London Protocol of 1830, the Dodecanese islands were again given to Turkey and Leros was once again under Turkish control.

During the Italian-Turkish War, on May 12 1912, the war ship “St. Mark” landed on Leros, raised the Italian flag and declared Lieutenant Gramatika commander of the island.

 

 

Leros was now occupied by the Italians.

From 1916 to 1918, the British used Leros as a naval base and with The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 all the Dodecanese islands (except Kastellorizo) were confirmed as Italian property.

After 28 October 1922, with De Vecchi as the military and political commander, the Italian Fascist regime attempted to “italianize” the Dodecanese.

They began by abolishing Greek schools and placing them under the control of the Italian authorities, made it compulsory to learn the Italian language and prohibited professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, who hadn’t studied at Italian universities, from pursuing their professions

Mussolini’s interest in the islands is well-known, especially Leros, which he considered a key location for controlling the eastern Mediterranean during his fascist rule which lasted from 1922 to 1943.

 

 

The island’s position in the heart of the Aegean Sea allowed control of the waterways from the Dardanelles to the Middle East and Lakki  was one of the most accessible, deep and wide natural harbours, the largest in the eastern Mediterranean, perfect for a naval base.

 

 

Here, Mussolini, with his visions of a new Roman Empire, planned an entire town known as Portolago, which some say took its name from Mario Lago, the Governor of the Italian colony from 1922 to 1936.

 

 

Others would have it that the Italians had already named the bay Portolago due to its likeness to a lake and the arrival of a Governor called Lago was just a coincidence.

Regardless of where its name originated, nothing like it is to be found anywhere in Greece, in fact, according to studies, Portolago , now known again today as Lakki, may be the only town worldwide with so many Art Deco style buildings concentrated in one place!

 

The Creation of Portolago

 

 

The transformation of Lakki, Lero’s harbour town, into Mussolini’s urban Utopia, began in 1923 with the main base of the Italian Royal Navy, built on an area of uninhabited marshland which had been drained and filled in with tons of concrete imported from Italy.

A plan to develop Portolago (Previously known as Lakki) under Italian rule, as a new model town, most of whose inhabitants were from the Italian military, was approved in 1934.

 

 

Apart from military infrastructure and housing the Italians came up with an impressive plan for administrative, educational, medical and tourist facilities.

Only five years later, it had over 7,000 inhabitants, making it one of the largest Italian bases in the Mediterranean and one of the most inhabited areas of the Dodecanese.

 

Razionalismo

An Expression of Early Modernism

 

 

In 1923 Mussolini, after consulting with Florestano Di Fausto (1890-1965), a respected engineer and architect, sent two of the greatest Italian architects of the day, Rodolfo Petracco and Armando Bernabiti to Leros to design his utopia, using local craftsmen and materials, in the style of Rationalismo.

Razionalismo, an architectural movement, could be described as being a minimalist, simple, functional design mixture of Art Déco and Bauhaus, a style which dominated much of the 20th century.

The architects were inspired by the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico an Italian artist and writer born in Greece, 1888 – 1978, Modernism and the Futurist movement, as well as the classical geometry of ancient Greek and Roman temples.

 

 

Complete urban complexes built in the razionalismo style are extremely rare, only two other examples are know; one being Sabauda near Rome and the other Asmara, in what is now Eritrea.

It’s therefore amazing that in Greece, one of the oldest countries of the world, you can find this modernist Utopia, one of the few examples of Razionalismo and one of the 20th Century’s most daring and unique experiments in architecture and urban planning to be found outside of Italy!

 

 Original Buildings of Portolago (Lakki)

 

Town Hall – Casa del Fascio – Fascist Party headquarters

 1935-1938 – Architect Armando Bernabiti

 

 

The building housed the Italian Municipality (on the first floor), the tax office, the Fascio(Fascism offices and the seat of the political Secretary), the youth club, the common room of the Black shirts, game rooms known as “Dopo Lavoro”, the post office on the ground floor and the Italian Pharmacy.

The Milizia (Fascist Guard of Mussolini) was housed in an extension of the building in 1936.

 

Market hall and clock tower

 1934-1936 – Architect – Rodolfo Petracco

 

 

 

 

This building, with its four entrances and circular interior, had shops on the ground floor, the Italian High School on the first floor and the Clock Tower housed the services of the Italian Municipality of Lakki.

 

 Primary school and kindergarten

1934-1936 – Architect Rodolfo Petracco

 

 

 

The school was run by Italian Nuns and on the first floor was the small church of the Virgin Mary.

With its circular entrance and splendid arched colonnade on the southern side this was maybe the most impressive public building on the beach front of Lakki.

 

 Cinema and Theater building

“Albergo Roma” Hotel Complex and “Giacomo Puccini” Cinema

1935 – 1938 Architects Rodolfo Petracco and Armando Bernabiti

 

 

 

 The Albergo Roma Hotel, now known as The Hotel Leros, had 19 rooms with 29 beds, 6 bathrooms, a restaurant, billiard room, reading room, bar and two reception lobbies; it is located next to the cinema named Giacoma Puccini.

The hotel was mainly used as accommodation for the wives and relatives of the Italian military personnel stationed on the island.

 

Church of Saint Francis – Now Agios Nikolao

 1935-1939 – Architect Armando Bernabiti

 

 

The church was bombed in 1943 and repaired; using concrete blocks, in the early 1950s and its appearance further altered by the addition of a “vestibule”, which changed its original front view.

 

 Palazzina

Military housing

1935 – 1940

 

 

Constructed in 1935, the residential districts which were home to the military personnel were separated according to the rank of the inhabitants.

The workers’ quarter, near the port, were uniform and rather low-key blocks of flats.

 The commissioned officers’ quarters, near the barracks, were stately villas of different designs.

The non-commissioned officers’ area, to the east, consisted of monotonous rows of semi-detached houses.

 

Casa del Balilla – House of the Fascist Youth

 1933 – Architect Armando Bernabiti

 

 

 

 

A building which housed the Italian Fascist youth organization functioning between 1926 and 1937

 

After the War

 

On 3rd September 1943 Italy surrendered to the British soldiers on the island.

This was followed by The Battle of Leros, when from September to November 1943, air raids took place on the island during a German special operation in which the Greek destroyer ship “Queen Olga” and the British destroyer “HMS Intrepid» were both bombed and sunk.

 

 

This was to be the last victory for the Germans and the final defeat of the allies.

The film “The Guns of Navarone”, filmed in Greece, is based on the Battle of Leros and the island’s coastal artillery guns, some of the largest naval artillery guns used during World War II, built and used by the Italians until they surrendered in 1943 and later by the Germans until their defeat.

 

 

After the Germans left the island, Leros came under British control until 7 March 1948, when together with the other Dodecanese Islands, Leros was once again united with Greece and Portolago, Mussolin’s Utopian dream, once again took the name Lakki.

 

The War Museum

Leros

 

 

 

The war museum of Leros, located in Merikia, just outside Lakki, is no ordinary museum; it’s situated inside the mountain, in a tunnel which was built in the 1930s as an ammunition storehouse by the Italians. (The whole island is crossed by tunnels dug on the orders of Mussolini, some of which are now museums).

 Around the entrance are military vehicles, planes and a collection of all sorts of weapons and once inside the museum you may actually think you’ve entered a war zone; audio tapes from WWII are playing the sound of bombers, just like way back then!

 

Aerophone – Parabolic Acoustic Mirror

“The Listening Wall”

 

 

The intricate building of the Aerofone, with its curved acoustic walls and underground infrastructure, located atop Mount Patela, is one of the few surviving aerial installations with 360 degree coverage in Europe and a unique sample of military architecture in Greece.

A leftover from the Italian Occupation of the Dodecanese (1912-1943) this device of the Italian Air Defense was able to monitor both ships and aircraft; the acoustic walls enabled ships and planes to be detected from a distance.

The building was restored in 2016 by the Association Italienne Amis de Leros in collaboration with the Municipality of Leros.

 

 The Psychopaths Colony

“Europe’s guilty secret”

 

Since the end of WWII Leros has, in many ways, been seen as a detention center, some have even called it “The Island of the damned”.

Read on and you will understand why.

 

 

In 1957 one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in Europe was established on Leros and was housed in the buildings of the Italian Naval Base.

For around forty years this asylum gave the island rather a bad reputation and Leros came to be known as “The Colony of Psychopaths”.

During the 1980s a team of journalists and psychiatrists uncovered the truth about the terrible conditions in which the patients were living.

The British newspaper, The Observer, labeled the psychiatric asylum of Leros: “Europe’s guilty secret”.

 

 

Early in the 1990’s the asylum was reorganized and partly closed.

 

Concentration Camps

The Political Exiles of the Dictatorship

 

 

During the Greek dictatorship, the Junta, which lasted seven years from April 1967 until July 1974, concentration camps for more than four thousand political prisoners, mostly rivals of the dictatorship and leftists, took over the old building of the psychiatric hospital, formerly the buildings of the Italian Naval Base.

 

The Leros Hotspot

 

 

In December 2015, the Greek Government, during the European migration crisis, built a refugee camp, with the capacity to hold one thousand migrants, in the grounds of the psychiatric hospital.

Leros had become an EU “Hotspot.”

In 2023, a “Close Controlled Access Center “(CCAC), in other words a high security detention center for asylum seekers, was established on the hills above the refugee Hotspot, which is now closed.

 

 

The deserted hospital buildings still exist however; the actual psychiatric hospital still operates in smaller outlying buildings.

 

Lakki Today

 

 

 

 

 In its prime, in the late 1930s, over 8,000 people lived in Lakki, in 2021 census, the population was only 2,093.

Portolago was renamed Lakki and the town was mostly left to go to ruin.

Its unique background though was still plainly visible.

The people of Leros never really accepted Lakki, which is understandable; however, with the passing of time the people are slowly disregarding the fascist ideology that made the place what it is.

In recent years many have come to appreciate the importance of the town as part of the world’s cultural heritage.

Today, the cinema and theater building, the hotel and the market hall have all been classified as listed monuments.

The Municipality of Leros’s goal is to get the whole town declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The town is now increasingly seen by Greeks for what it is; a completely unique city, not to be found anywhere else in Greece and that’s something worth preserving!

 

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