About Zakynthos

Zakynthos, also known as Zante, lies in the Ionian Sea roughly 20 kilometres off the west coast of the Peloponnese, and ranks as the third-largest of the Ionian Islands. Covering 405.55 square kilometres and home to 40,508 residents according to the 2021 census, the island stretches about 40 kilometres in length and is fringed by some 123 kilometres of coastline. Its geography splits roughly in two: a mountainous western half, rising to 758 metres at Vrachionas and dropping to the sea in sheer limestone cliffs pierced by sea caves, and a lower, more densely populated eastern plain of fertile farmland and long sandy beaches. Since 2011 the island has formed a single municipality, merging the historic city of Zakynthos with five formerly separate municipal districts. The population has fluctuated considerably since the early twentieth century, from 37,482 residents recorded in 1920 to a peak of 42,148 in 1940, before settling near its present level in more recent censuses; as late as the mid-2000s the island's rural districts were still growing faster than Zakynthos Town itself, with rural births outnumbering urban ones by more than two to one.

History

Zakynthos already appears in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and ancient tradition traced its name to Zacynthus, a son of the Arcadian chief Dardanus; centuries later the island also produced Ugo Foscolo, who went on to become one of the leading Italian poets of the early 19th century. From 1482 to 1797, the island was ruled by the Venetian Republic, which nicknamed it Fiore di Levante, the Flower of the Levant, and left a lasting mark on its architecture, vocabulary and aristocratic families before the Republic's fall passed the island briefly to France, then, from 1800, to the Septinsular Republic, a state formed under joint Russo-Ottoman protection and often counted as the first autonomous Greek polity since the fall of Byzantium, then to renewed French rule, then to British administration, and finally to the modern Greek state.

During the Second World War, the island's mayor, Loukas Karrer, and its bishop, Chrysostomos Dimitriou, sheltered the roughly 275 Jewish residents of Zakynthos Town from deportation, an act later recognised by Yad Vashem. A far more physically destructive event struck in 1953, when a 7.3-magnitude earthquake levelled much of the historic townscape; the Zakynthos Town seen today was rebuilt largely in the decades that followed, with earthquake-resistant construction replacing the lost Venetian-era buildings.

Economy, Nature and Culture

The island's economy still rests partly on agriculture, particularly olive oil, Zante currants, grapes and citrus, though tourism has grown into the dominant sector since the mid-1980s, especially around Laganas, which turned from a quiet fishing village into one of Greece's busiest resorts after Zakynthos International Airport, located a little over 4 kilometres from the town, opened to charter traffic in 1972; smaller-scale fishing and citrus growing still continue alongside these larger industries in many of the island's rural villages. The Bay of Laganas, on the southern coast, now forms the core of the National Marine Park of Zakynthos, established in 1999 as the first Mediterranean park created specifically to protect nesting loggerhead sea turtles; the sandy beach of the nearby islet of Marathonisi, also known as Turtle Island, is among the most important nesting sites recorded within it. Along the northwestern cliffs, sea caves known locally as the Blue Caves take on a vivid blue hue as sunlight reflects through the clear water, and are reachable only by small boat.

Cultural life on the island still centres on the poet Dionysios Solomos, author of the poem that became the Greek national anthem, whose work and personal effects are preserved in Zakynthos Town's Solomos Museum alongside other 18th- and 19th-century local art and ceramics. Above the town, the hill of Bochali holds the ruins of a Venetian castle with sweeping views over the bay, while the rebuilt town below still centres on the church of Agios Dionysios, dedicated to the island's patron saint. Along the coast, the varied terrain, sheltered bays and hidden coves such as Navagio, an isolated northwestern inlet holding the wreck of the smuggling vessel MV Panagiotis and reachable only by boat, are the kind of shoreline best appreciated slowly, which is why so many visitors explore this coast by private gulet charter rather than staying on land.