Zakynthos

Zakynthos is the green Ionian island: olive groves, vineyards and currants on the eastern plain, and sheer white cliffs falling into glassy water on the west. Most travellers come for one image, the Navagio shipwreck under its own pale cliff. Most are surprised to find the rest of the island gentler than the postcard suggests.

A note on Navagio. The beach has been closed since 2022 after a series of rockfalls, and the wreck of the Panagiotis broke apart in the storms of January 2024. The land viewpoint above the cove was also closed for safety. The cove is still worth seeing, but only from the water. Boat trips run from Porto Vromi and Cape Skinari, and you cannot land. Check the status before you travel.

Zakynthos Town was rebuilt with care after the 1953 earthquake destroyed most of it. The poet Dionysios Solomos was born here in 1798. His Hymn to Liberty became the Greek national anthem, and the small museum on the harbour holds his manuscripts. The bay of Laganas, in the south, is the main nesting site in the Mediterranean for the loggerhead turtle, Caretta caretta. In nesting season the National Marine Park restricts the beaches at dawn and dusk. Respect the rules.

Divide the island this way: stay in the east and visit the west by boat. Keri and Porto Vromi have the cliff coast. The Blue Caves at the northern tip, near Cape Skinari, are best in mid-morning, when the light reaches inside them. A boat from Agios Nikolaos costs about as much as a meal and takes a couple of hours.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Helistar and Ariston Aviation both fly the Athens to Zakynthos route by helicopter, and Lesante Blu in Tragaki has its own private helipad for arrivals straight to the hotel. Zakynthos airport (ZTH) takes private fixed-wing aircraft all year; confirm slot clearance with the Port Authority in advance, then transfer to the property or the harbour.

  2. The address

    Lesante Blu in Tragaki is an all-suite, adults-only hotel with a private dock, from which its own yachts leave for trips along the west coast. The helipad on site takes helicopter arrivals directly. There are six suite categories, each with a private pool or jetted terrace facing the sea; ask for the upper tier for the Ionian horizon.

  3. The kitchens

    Komis, at Molos Port, is the fish restaurant on the harbour: a family table, cooking local produce and making no concessions to the tourist trade. Malanos, on Agiou Athanasiou Street 2 kilometres south of town in a working farmyard, has served rabbit stifado, a slow-cooked stew, rooster in red wine and stuffed aubergine for 40 years. Prosilio, near Solomou Square, is the fine-dining address under Chef Krystallia Karageorgou, with a list that runs deep in Ionian and Zakynthian wine.

  4. Avgoustiatis

    Goumas Estate at Trilagkada, near the village of Maries in the northwest of the island, makes Avgoustiatis, a native Ionian red variety, from a semi-mountainous vineyard at 450 metres planted in 1996. Giannis Giatras-Goumas runs the estate alongside an icon-painting workshop, and tasting visits run daily from 11am. The Vostilidi white, from another native Zakynthian variety, is equally worth taking home.

  5. Byzantine Museum

    The Museum of Zakynthos at 3 Solomou Square opened in 1960 to house the icons rescued from churches levelled in the 1953 earthquake. At its centre is the Ionian School collection: some 800 works, from the Cretan tradition to Panagiotis Doxaras, who trained in Venice and brought Western naturalism into Orthodox painting. It opens daily except Tuesday, 8.30am to 3.30pm.

  6. Mount Skopos

    The path starts at the southeast edge of Argassi and climbs to the Monastery of Panagia Skopiotissa at 492 metres, built before the mid-15th century and granted to the Logothetis noble family in 1534. Allow 90 minutes to the summit; the last section uses a fixed rope. The south face looks over Laganas Bay, and on a clear morning the view from the north face reaches Kefalonia.

  7. Porto Limnionas

    Porto Limnionas is a narrow fjord on the west coast, 40 minutes by road from town down a track that narrows to a single lane at the end. There is no sand: you enter the water from rock into a sheltered channel between two limestone walls, with almost no swell or current. The caves to the left of the inlet can be swum in a low sea, and the cove stays still in conditions that close the open beaches of the west coast.

  8. Gerakas

    Gerakas, the eastern nesting beach on the Vasilikos peninsula, is Zone A of the National Marine Park. Access runs from 7am to sunset only, from 1 May to 31 October, with a daily cap of 350 visitors and no umbrellas or sun furniture beyond 5 metres from the waterline. Nesting runs from May to August and hatchlings emerge through October; before planning a morning on the beach, check the turtle wardens’ count at the kiosk.

  9. Saint Dionysios

    The island’s patron saint is celebrated twice: on 24 August, for the transfer of his relics from Strofades in 1717, and on 17 December, the date of his death in 1622. His silver reliquary, made in 1829 by Diamantis Bafas of Kalarrytes in Epirus and his son George, is carried through the town at dusk with philharmonic bands. He is one of Greece’s “walking saints”: his slippers wear through in the reliquary and are replaced from time to time, and the old leather is cut up and given to pilgrims.

  10. The window

    Mid-May to mid-June, and September, bring the best mix of warmth, open water and workable numbers on the island. July and August bring direct charter traffic from northern Europe, package crowds around Laganas and serious heat inland. The National Marine Park’s beach restrictions apply from 1 May to 31 October, so any itinerary on the eastern peninsula must allow for Gerakas and the south-coast nesting beaches until the end of October.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Agios Nikolaos

    Agios Nikolaos, on the northern tip, is the harbour of the island’s wild north: small but important, with the ferry to Pesada on Kefalonia and the day boats that work the coast. A yacht tenders from here to Cape Skinari and the caves along the cliffs, in the north-eastern corner where Zakynthos turns from resort to bare rock.

  2. The Blue Caves

    The Blue Caves run along the cliffs between Agios Nikolaos and Cape Skinari, the island’s northernmost point. They are shallow openings in the white rock with a run of natural arches, named for the turquoise the sea turns inside them. The big tour boats stand off the entrance, and only small craft and tenders pass in.

  3. Navagio

    Navagio, or Shipwreck Bay, is the cove in the white cliffs of the northwest where the coaster Panagiotis, a small cargo ship, ran aground in 1980 while smuggling contraband and was left to rust on the pebbles. It can be reached only from the sea, and a yacht may stand off to see the wreck and the cliffs.

  4. Marathonisi

    Marathonisi and the whole of Laganas Bay lie inside the National Marine Park of Zakynthos, founded in 1999 as the first Mediterranean park for the loggerhead turtle. The turtles (Caretta caretta) nest on its beaches through the summer, and the park bans speedboats off the nesting shore and fishing in its marine zones. A yacht in Laganas goes slowly and without noise, or lies outside the park boundary.

Mythology

  1. The Harpies

    The chase after the Harpies ends at the Strophades, south of Zakynthos, where Iris swears that they will leave Phineus alone. Apollonius says the islands took their new name when the sons of Boreas turned for home. Before that they were the Plotai, the Floating Islands.