History.

Homer in Iliad mentions the island with the name

Crapathos. According to Diodoros Sikeliotis, the first residents of Karpathos were people from Crete during the Minos era, who dominated over the area.
According to another version, the first residents of the island were Phoeniceans. A small port and village with the name Phoeniki (Finiki) can be found today.

According to Stravon the island during the antiquity was Tetrapolis (four towns) and it had a famous name given to the hononymous Sea.
The towns were: Nisyros on the island of Saria, Vrykous on the North East of the island, Potideo right outside todays capital of Pigadia (where there was a necropolis and the temple of Pindia Athena) and Arkesia in the locality of Arkasa.
The archaeological society made excavations in 1923 and discovered the remains of Ancient Arkesia, the church of Agia Anastasia with mosaics and inscriptions and a grave-yard of the 5th-6th century.

The island of Karpathos was subject to Spartans in 404 B.C. When the Athenians sovereigned with Conon in 375 B.C., the island was friendly to Athens and sent a cypress as an offering for Erechteum. The Athenian people gave the island its self-reliance for repayment. During the Roman era, Karpathos with all the island of Dodecanese was a member of the confederacy of the islands, which was organised in 313 A.C. by Diocletian (provincia insularum), and it had as its capital the island of Rhodos. Under the domination of the Romans, Karpathos becomes an island of strategic importance because it becomes one of the three Naval Stations of Rome in the Mediterranean. Karpathos maintains this strategic power during the Byzantine Empire as well. Historical sources mention that the ships of the Karpathian Naval Station lead Nikiforos Fokas to Crete in 961 A.D.

During the Byzantine era, Karpathos and Rhodos

belonged to the country of Civiraeus in the 6th century. From 1206 to 1224 Karpathos belonged to the principality of Leon Cavalas, who was the ruler of Crete, Kasos and Rhodos. Karpathos and the other islands were conquered in 1282 by Genonatean and their leader, the lord Andreas Moreskos.

The island was conquered in 1306 by the ruler of Crete, Andreas Kornaros.

The later was chased out by the Knights of Janina who became magistrates of Rhodos, Karpathos and Kasos in 1309.

In 1315 the island was conquered again by Kornaros and it was administrated by his family till 1537 when the Turks conquered Karpathos with their leader Barbarossa. The island of Karpathos was liberated in 1823 and becomes a member of the Greek province. The prefect of the island was Grigoriadis till 1830 when the island was conquered again by the Turks after the convention between London and Turkey.

Karpathos and all the other islands of Dodecanese were oqupied by the Italians in 1912 and they remained under the Italian sovereignty till the end of World War II.

The island was the first from the Dodecanese islands which was liberated from the Italians on the 5th of October 1944. The whole of Dodecanese, together with Karpathos was finally returned to Greece with the Paris Treaty (31st of March 1947).
Since then Karpathos, Kasos and Saria form the most southern part of Dodecanese.

"Karpathos' name was so remarkable that even the Sea around it was name after it"(Stravon)