Argostoli did not begin as an obvious choice for a capital. The island's administrative seat had long been the hilltop fortress of Agios Georgios — Kastro — a defensible stronghold but an inconvenient one. In 1757, a pragmatic shift: the population moved down to the bay, drawn by the trading opportunities a sheltered harbour offered. Within decades Argostoli had developed into one of the busiest ports in Greece. Currants and olive oil flowed out; Venetian influence, Ottoman traders, and later British administrators flowed in. The bay upon which the town sits — a long shallow inlet separated from the open Ionian by the Paliki peninsula — gave ships calm anchorage and gave merchants a staging post for half the eastern Mediterranean. Prosperity built the handsome townhouses, the arcaded streets, the merchant quarter that would be destroyed 200 years later in 73 seconds of shaking earth.

12 August 1953, 11:24 local time. The earthquake struck with a magnitude of 6.8, its epicentre directly south of the island. Buildings that had survived German bombing in 1943 did not survive this. Virtually every house on the island collapsed. The Fanari lighthouse on the Piccolo Gyro road — built during British occupation in 1829 — was destroyed; it was later rebuilt from the original plans, complete with its Doric columns. The law courts, originally built by the British from stone quarried at the Cyclopean site of ancient Krani, came down. The Archaeological Museum, the Bell Tower, the Catholic church along Lithostroto — all gone. The population, many of whom had lost family members, faced an impossible choice between rebuilding and leaving. Many left. Those who stayed rebuilt a city that was, by necessity, entirely new and yet — through deliberate effort — recognisably itself. The Bell Tower was rebuilt in 1985 to house the original clock mechanism, salvaged from the ruins. Small museums were opened in the restored buildings. The grief was carried forward along with the stones.

Argostoli sits between wonders. To the east, behind the town and beneath the ruins of the Castle of St. George, the Koutavos Lagoon stretches in murky green stillness — once a malarial swamp, now a protected nature reserve and feeding ground for loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta). To the west, the coastal road out of town known since Venetian times as the Piccolo Gyro leads past the extraordinary Katovothres, where seawater disappears into holes in the rock and travels underground beneath the entire island, re-emerging some 14 days later in the Karavomylos area near Sami, having passed through the underground Melissani lake. The power of this flowing seawater was harnessed in 1835 to run a water mill. The De Bosset Bridge — 689.9 metres of stone arches spanning the lagoon, built in 1813 by the Swiss engineer Charles Philippe de Bosset — divides the Koutavos from the bay. An obelisk on a small man-made island midway along the bridge marks British presence. The bridge is now pedestrian only, restored between 2011 and 2013.

Argostoli has produced an outsized roster of notable inhabitants. Constantine Phaulkon, born here in 1647, became first counsellor to King Narai of Ayutthaya in Siam — one of the most improbable careers in early modern history. Ioannis Metaxas, born 1871 in Ithaca and schooled in Cephalonia, served as general and eventual dictator of Greece during the 4th of August Regime of 1936. Christian Zervos, born 1889, became one of the 20th century's most important art critics and champions of Picasso. The merchant Panayis Athanase Vagliano — whose statue stands on the waterfront — is credited as the father of modern Greek shipping. The city's tiny museum on Lithostroto is dedicated to the soldiers of the Italian Acqui Division, approximately five thousand of whom were executed by German forces in September 1943 in one of the worst war crimes on Greek soil. Argostoli remembers; the museum stays open some mornings and most evenings.

Four kilometres across the water sits Lixouri, Argostoli's perennial rival. The two towns are 40 kilometres apart by road but four by sea, which means the ferry runs every hour in season and every half-hour at the height of summer. The rivalry has historical roots — Lixouri was once the island's cultural capital, home to a Catholic bishopric and a reputation for learning — but it plays out today primarily in carnival season and sporting competitions. Residents of Argostoli are known to advise visitors, with mock gravity, that there is nothing to see in Lixouri. Residents of Lixouri, presumably, return the favour.