The harbour channel of Gaios with the wooded islet of Agios Nikolaos and its hidden Venetian fort

Paxos · History

From Poseidon's hideaway to the olive island of Venice

A small island on the sea route between Italy and Greece, shaped by a myth, four centuries of Venetian rule and the slow work of olive farmers.

Timeline

The story of Paxos

  1. Myth

    Poseidon's trident

    A local legend says that Poseidon, wanting a quiet place to be alone with his wife Amphitrite, struck the southern tip of Corfu with his trident and broke off a piece of land: Paxos. It is a story told with a smile, but it suits an island that has always been a retreat.

    Panorama of the white limestone cliffs of the west coast above deep blue sea

  2. Antiquity

    "The great Pan is dead"

    Paxos appears in one of the strangest stories of the ancient world. Plutarch tells how, in the reign of the emperor Tiberius, a ship sailing for Italy was becalmed near the islands of Paxi, and a voice called across the water to its Egyptian pilot, Thamus, telling him to announce that the great Pan was dead. Little else is known of the island in antiquity.

    The sun setting over a calm bay of Paxos

  3. Middle Ages

    Pirates and fiefs

    In the Middle Ages Paxos followed the fortunes of Corfu, passing between Byzantine, Norman and Angevin hands. Its small population lived inland, away from the shore, for fear of pirates who raided these waters for centuries.

    The white bell tower of Agios Dimitrios in the inland hamlet of Fanariotatika

  4. 1386–1797

    The Venetian centuries

    Like Corfu, Paxos came under Venetian rule at the end of the fourteenth century and stayed Venetian until the fall of the Republic in 1797. The Venetians fortified the islet of Agios Nikolaos off Gaios and promoted the planting of olive trees, which turned the island into the grove it is today and its oil into its fortune.

    The wooded islet of Agios Nikolaos, with its Venetian fort hidden in the pines

  5. 1797–1864

    French, Russians and British

    After Venice fell, Paxos passed with the other Ionian islands through French rule, the Russo-Ottoman Septinsular Republic and French rule again, before the islands became a British protectorate after the Napoleonic wars. The British built roads and public buildings across the Ionian; in 1864 they handed the islands to Greece.

    The main square of Gaios with its café terraces

  6. 19th–20th century

    Oil, soap and emigration

    Through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the island lived from its olives. Presses were built in the groves and a soap factory in Loggos worked the oil; the old mill of the Tsikis family dates from 1928. But the land could not feed everyone, and many islanders left to work at sea or abroad.

    The front of an old stone olive mill on Paxos

  7. Today

    Quiet by design

    Paxos found a new living in tourism late and on a small scale. With no airport and little room to build, it never had the big resorts of its neighbours. Visitors stay in restored houses and villas, the olives are still harvested every winter, and in the off season the island is almost empty.

    Loggos bay seen through the trees, with moored yachts and the village

Visit

Historic sites to see

The wooded islet of Agios Nikolaos across the channel from Gaios

Venetian fort of Agios Nikolaos

The overgrown walls of the Venetian fort on the pine-covered islet across the channel from Gaios, with an old windmill and a chapel nearby.

The white monastery buildings on Panagia islet, seen from the sea

Monastery of Panagia

The monastery of the Virgin on its own islet at the mouth of Gaios harbour, the focus of the great island festival every 15 August.

The front of the old Tsikis olive mill on Paxos

The old olive presses

Stone mill buildings scattered through the groves, among them the mill of the Tsikis family of 1928, witnesses to the oil that made the island.

Houses on the harbour front of Loggos with boats at the quay

The soap factory chimney at Loggos

The tall chimney of the old soap factory on the edge of the harbour at Loggos, where the island's oil was turned into soap.

The white bell tower of Agios Dimitrios in Fanariotatika

Agios Dimitrios, Fanariotatika

One of many village churches in the interior, its white bell tower standing out above the olive trees.

See the treasures up close

Visit the museums that hold Paxos's finest finds.

Explore museums

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