Zakynthos, Greece
Self-guided audio walking tour of Zakynthos
48 hand-checked places and 2 walking routes. aiGuide notices where you are and tells you each place's story as you walk past, so you can keep your phone in your pocket.
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Zakynthos Town: poets, saints and squares
From Solomos Square through the museums and churches of the rebuilt capital to the pilgrimage church of St Dionysios by the harbour.
1.Plateia Solomou
The grand seafront square of Zakynthos Town, named for the national poet Dionysios Solomos and rebuilt on a generous open plan after the 1953 earthquake levelled the old city.
2.Agios Nikolaos tou Molou
A small stone Venetian-era church of 1561 on Solomos Square, the sailors' church of the old harbour mole and one of very few buildings in town to survive 1953.
3.Vyzantino Mouseio Zakynthou
The museum on Solomos Square holding the icons, carved iconostases and painted ceilings salvaged from the churches destroyed by the 1953 earthquake.
4.Mouseio Solomou kai Epifanon Zakynthion
Museum and mausoleum on St Mark's Square holding the tombs of Greece's national poet Dionysios Solomos and of the poet Andreas Kalvos.
5.Agios Markos (Katholiki Ekklisia)
The Catholic church that gives St Mark's Square its name — a legacy of four centuries of Venetian rule, rebuilt after the 1953 earthquake.
6.Archontiko Roma
The town house of the Roma family, one of Zante's great noble houses, restored as a house-museum of aristocratic Ionian life.
7.Mouseio Grigoriou Xenopoulou
A small museum in the family home of Grigorios Xenopoulos, the prolific Zakynthian novelist and playwright who chronicled Greek bourgeois life.
8.Ieros Naos Agiou Dionysiou
The great pilgrimage church of Zakynthos, home to the relics of the island's patron St Dionysios, with a campanile modelled on St Mark's in Venice.
Strani Hill, Bochali and the Castle
The uphill classic: the pine hill where the national anthem was written, the balcony village of Bochali, and the Venetian fortress above the town.
1.Plateia Solomou
The grand seafront square of Zakynthos Town, named for the national poet Dionysios Solomos and rebuilt on a generous open plan after the 1953 earthquake levelled the old city.
2.Lofos Strani
The pine-covered hill where Dionysios Solomos, hearing the cannon of besieged Missolonghi across the water, wrote the Hymn to Liberty in May 1823.
3.Bochali
The balcony village above Zakynthos Town — a small square with the church of Zoodochos Pigi, cafés over the rooftops, and the road up to the castle.
4.Kastro Zakynthou
The ruined Venetian fortress above Bochali, built over the ancient acropolis, its gate still bearing the Lion of St Mark, its walls now shaded by pines.
More must-see places in Zakynthos
Faros Keriou kai Mizithres
The lighthouse clifftop at Cape Keri, looking down 200-metre white walls to the twin Mizithres sea stacks — the island's grandest sunset viewpoint.
Paralia Gerakas
The island's premier loggerhead nesting beach — a long protected crescent under clay cliffs at the tip of Vasilikos, run on the turtles' timetable.
Galazies Spilies
The famous chain of sea arches under Cape Skinari where reflected light turns the water — and everything in it — an electric, luminous blue.
Navagio
The world-famous cove where the rusting freighter Panagiotis lies beached on blinding white pebbles between 200-metre cliffs — reachable only by sea.
Thea Navagiou
The clifftop platform above Shipwreck Beach — the vantage that produces the famous aerial photograph, at the end of the road past Anafonitria.
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