Photos

A wonderful sight on Zakynthos, which has made the rounds of the island through postcards that represent it on every occasion, is the Navayio (Shipwreck, of a boat that transported illegal cigarettes, on its west side. Vertical rocks towering over a rusty shipwreck abandoned in the middle of the beach with the blue Ionian sea in the background stimulate the imagination and create images from times long past.


History Notes:
Ζάκυνθος, the third largest of the Ionian Islands, covers an area of 410 square kilometers and its coastline is roughly 123 kilometers in length. The island is named after Zacynthus, son of a legendary Arcadian chief Dardanus. The name, like all similar names ending in -nthos, is pre-Mycenaean or Pelasgian in origin.
Zakynthos was inhabited from the Neolithic Age, as some archaeological excavations have proved.

The famous ancient Greek poet and writer, Homer, first mentioned the island in his masterpieces, the Iliad and the Odyssey, stating that the first inhabitants of it were the son of King Dardanos of Troy called Zakynthos and his men and that they first came on the island around 1500-1600 BC.

The island was then conquered by the King Arkeisios of Kefalonia. The famous Ulysses (Odysseus in Greek) from Ithaca was the next King to conquer the island.

Later on, a treaty was signed that made Zakynthos an independent democracy, the first established in the Hellenic area, and that lasted more than 650 years.