Shipwreck beach, loggerhead turtles, and the Blue Caves — Ionian island of contrasts
Zakynthos (Zante) is the southernmost major Ionian island — famous for the Navagio (Shipwreck) beach, where the rusting hull of the MV Panagiotis sits on a white-pebble beach enclosed by 200-metre limestone cliffs and accessible only by boat. The island's south coast is nesting ground for the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta), one of the last protected nesting sites in the Mediterranean. The Blue Caves in the north, where sea light filters through underwater arches to create an unearthly glow, are among Greece's most photographed formations.
Zakynthos was a Venetian possession from 1484 to 1797 and the Venetian influence is visible in the neoclassical architecture that replaced the buildings destroyed by the catastrophic 1953 earthquake (which levelled 80% of the island). The island produced the Greek national poet Dionysios Solomos, who wrote the Hymn to Liberty in 1823, the first stanzas of which became the national anthem of both Greece and Cyprus. The neoclassical church of St. Dionysios in Zakynthos Town is the spiritual heart of the island.