When you picture a small Aegean island, chances are you imagine narrow cobbled streets, whitewashed houses, and a charming village harbor. What you probably don’t expect to find is a city with wide boulevards, expansive public squares, avant-garde architecture—and World War II bullet holes still visible on some buildings.
Welcome to Lakki, a seaside town on the island of Leros, unlike anywhere else in Greece. Surreal, haunting, and visually striking, Lakki feels like a scene pulled from a Giorgio de Chirico painting or a Federico Fellini film. It’s not just a town—it’s one of the most daring and overlooked architectural and urban planning experiments of the 20th century.
Mussolini’s Mediterranean Vision
Lakki’s origins trace back to the early 20th century, when the Dodecanese islands were under Italian rule following their occupation in 1912. Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini considered Leros a strategic stronghold in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Gulf of Lakki, the second-largest natural harbor in the region after Malta, was seen as the ideal location for a naval headquarters that could monitor sea routes from the Dardanelles to the Middle East.
To realize this vision, Mussolini dispatched two of Italy’s leading architects—Rodolfo Petracco and Armando Bernabiti—with a monumental task: design a city from scratch on an undeveloped marshland flanking a small fishing village.
"From KV 28 – Work by the uploader, Public Domain,
Inspired by the dreamlike geometry of de Chirico’s metaphysical art, ancient Greek temples, and the progressive lines of Art Deco and Bauhaus, the architects created something radical. Their vision combined minimalism and symmetry with a fearless blend of modernist, Venetian, and Renaissance influences. The result was a cohesive cityscape of astonishing originality—equal parts utopian and surreal.
A Mediterranean Modernist Marvel
Construction began in 1930 and continued until 1938. The city, initially named Portolago, was designed to serve both military and civilian needs. It included everything from naval bases and military housing to schools, theaters, markets, hotels, and a hospital—all designed in the same bold, rationalist style.
Architecture professor Vasilis Kolonas describes it best:
“The church, the theater, the school, the hospital, the artillery barracks, the hotel, and especially the circular market with the clock tower form a unified architectural ensemble that could easily have been part of a 1930s international architecture exhibition.”
Portolago was intended to house up to 30,000 residents, with neighborhoods thoughtfully planned to include separate housing for workers and officers, large gardens, curved streets, and functional infrastructure. Architects even incorporated elements of the natural landscape into their designs, planting pine and eucalyptus trees throughout the city.
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Yet despite its elegance, the city bore an unsettling duality: beneath its modernist sheen, it functioned as a tool of fascist propaganda and control.
A City Frozen in Time
Following World War II and the defeat of the Axis powers, the Dodecanese islands officially joined Greece in 1947. Portolago was renamed Lakki, and much of the city was left to decay. Its association with Mussolini’s regime and fascist symbolism cast a long shadow, and efforts to preserve its architecture were largely neglected for decades.
The town’s decline was further deepened by the grim legacy of the Leros State Psychiatric Hospital, known for its inhumane conditions, and the island’s use as a place of political exile during and after the war.
According to Italian architect Donatella Mancella, the reason Lakki has remained so overlooked is simple: a lack of resources and a cultural tendency to undervalue modern architectural heritage.
A Shift in Perspective
In recent years, however, that’s started to change. A growing number of voices are calling for Lakki’s preservation—not just as a relic of the past, but as a unique chapter in global architectural history. Several buildings, including the cinema, hotel, and market, have already been declared protected monuments.
The Municipality of Leros, in partnership with Greece’s Ministry of Culture and Sports, has launched an effort to designate Lakki as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As part of this initiative, the National Technical University of Athens—working alongside the University of Thessaly—is developing a strategic plan to promote the architectural and cultural identity of both Lakki and nearby Lepida. The project also aims to spotlight historical tourism linked to World War battle sites, with a focus on sustainable development.
A formal presentation of the plan took place on December 5, marking a long-overdue step in recognizing Lakki’s singular place in the architectural world.
A Beautiful Ghost Town
Despite its grandeur, Lakki today is a city of contradictions. Designed for tens of thousands, it now houses fewer than 2,000 residents. Many of its buildings remain vacant, their scars from wartime bombings still visible. The wide streets, once bustling with military officers and families, now fall silent at night.
As BBC journalist Alex Sakalis wrote in his feature on Lakki:
“The Art Deco cinema appears to be charging toward the sea like a train. Behind it, a courtyard clings to an imposing clock tower with a disc-shaped structure jutting out like a toaster. The four clock faces show different times. The church is austere and minimalist—pure Bauhaus. The school fuses modernist form with Byzantine character.”
He adds:
“Walking through Lakki at night feels like stepping onto a film set after the cameras have stopped rolling and the actors have gone home.”
The Final Word
Lakki is a place where modernism met militarism, where avant-garde design collided with authoritarian rule—and where time seems to have paused. It’s a town that challenges assumptions, quietly asking visitors to consider the complicated legacy of beauty born from oppression.
And while Mussolini’s grand plans crumbled long ago, the city he commissioned remains—a paradox in the Aegean, waiting to be rediscovered.
The moral of the story?
Better late than never… even if it’s 74 years late.
