Cyclades Islands : Amorgos, Andros, Folegandros, Ios, Kea, Kythnos, Milos, Mykonos, Naxos, Paros and Antiparos, Santorini, Sifnos, Serifos, Sikinos, Syros, Tinos

Northern Aegean Islands:
Chios, Ikaria, Limnos, Lesvos, Samos, Samothraki, Thassos

Ionian Islands:
Corfu (Kerkyra), Ithaki, Kefalonia, Kythera, Lefkada, Paxos, Zakynthos

Saronic Islands:
Aegina, Angistri, Poros, Hydra, Salamina, Spetsis

Sporades Islands:
Alonissos, Skiathos, Skopelos, Skyros

Dodecanese Islands:
Astypalia, Halki, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kassos, Kastellorizo, Kos, Leros, Nisyros, Patmos, Rhodes, Symi, Tilos

Other Islands:
Crete, Evia, Cyprus

Ionian Islands - Zakynthos (Zakinthos, Zante, Zacinto, and Zacynthus)

 

Zakynthos is the most northern and third larges Ionian island, and lies off the west coast of the Peloponnese. It also incorporates the tiny Strotadhes Islands to the south. The main island is indented by a high-cliffed deep bay on the south coast, grand and imposing to sail into. But Zakynthos’s center is a fertile plain, bound on the west by limestone hills filled with sinkholes, caves, and steep cliffs down to the sea. In the center of the hills is the half-mile high Mount Vrakhionas. On the east, the plain is bound by a lower range of hills used largely for grazing. The capital, Zakinthos, lies on the east coast at the site of the ancient city Zacynthus; it is the seat of a metropolitan bishop. It is marked by the beauty of flowers and the destruction of earthquakes.

Thucydides said that Zakynthos was founded by Achaeans from the Peloponnese. The island was used by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War, but the Romans captured and annexed its fertile plains to keep it out of the Achaean League in the 3rd century BC. Later it was pillaged by the Vandals and Saracens, and in the 12th century AD it was taken, along with Corfu, Kefalonia, and Leukas, by Margarito of Brindisi, after which it was held by the Orsini, then by the counts of Tocchi, and at last by Venice until the Napoleonic wars, when it was given to France and then Britain, and finally back to Greece.

During all these times of strife, Zakynthos was frequently depopulated; today the depopulation continues, but in a gentler way: in the exodus of its young people to the mainland. But today Zakynthos’s city spreads along two miles of a crescent bay, overlooked by the battlements of a ruined hilltop castle, and the people are at peace and often find employment in the tourist industry. Shady arcades and balconies with living flowers festooning the plazas and streets with color stretch through the city, and stately campaniles loft their bells near the churches. Zakynthos was once called the fior di Levante, the “flower of the East,” by the Venetians. Avenues are still lined with villas, but once they were lined with palazzi, operas and cathedrals catering to the merchants from Italy creating a Venice of the Ionian Sea. But much of the glory was destroyed by the 1953 earthquake, and many of the treasures were ruined by the ensuing fires. The treasures that remain are housed in a museum in Zakynthos, and include gilded altar screens from the Eastern Orthodox Church, chiaroscuro canvases by Kandounis, and archaic treasures. But most of the architectural treasures are gone, and the town was reduced to a third of its original population, mostly from those who moved away.

Historically, Zakynthos provided pitch used by Greeks in time immemorial to seal the bottoms of their boats; when Homer spoke of the “black ships” of the Greeks, he may well have been referring to this sealant.

The central plains and the eastern hills are cultivated, and the chief exports are currants, olive oil, wine, and fresh fruit. Zakynthos has been destroyed at least three times in modern record by earthquakes, and the buildings on the island had to be extensively rebuilt after the earthquake that so damaged the southern Ionian islands in 1953.