Zakynthos · Things to do
Beaches, trails, festivals, food and wine: the experiences that make this island its own.
Experiences
Ideas for every kind of day, from a lazy swim to a full-day hike.
Festival
Walk the main road after midnight, from the bars to the big clubs, Rescue, Sizzle and Zeros among them, and stay out until it gets light. Foam parties and themed nights change from season to season, so check the posters on the strip.
Laganas
Beach
Cross the wooden bridge to the small pine-covered islet at the west end of the bay, with a beach bar and clear water.
Agios Sostis, Laganas
Nature
Take a licensed boat to Marathonisi, swim off its beach and look into the sea caves. You may see loggerheads in the bay, but never chase, touch or feed them.
Marathonisi
Hike
Stand on the cliff above Navagio and look down two hundred metres to the wreck. Landing on the beach has been banned since the rockfalls, and the viewpoint itself has been closed at times for safety work, so check before you drive up.
Navagio viewpoint, the north
Beach
Take a small boat into the arches and caves of the north-east cape, where the water glows bright blue. Go in the morning for the best light.
Cape Skinari and Agios Nikolaos
Nature
Drive to the lighthouse at the south-west tip and watch the sun set behind the sea stacks of Mizithres.
Keri
Culture
Visit the Solomos Museum and the Byzantine Museum, then climb to Bochali for the view.
Zakynthos Town
Food & wine
Drive across the island for a sunset dinner at a taverna on the edge of the west coast cliffs.
Kampi
Festival
The island's patron saint is carried through the streets with bands and crowds. The August feast falls in the middle of the summer season.
Zakynthos Town, 24 August and 17 December
Only on Zakynthos
What makes Zakynthos different from every other Greek island.
The beach at the end of Laganas's club strip is a nesting beach of the National Marine Park of Zakynthos, founded in 1999 as the first national park in the Mediterranean created for sea turtles. Every summer night the clubs are full and the sand, a few hundred metres away, is left dark and empty for the loggerheads.
Usually between about 900 and 2,000 loggerhead nests are dug on the park's six beaches in a season, which makes the bay one of the most important nesting places of Caretta caretta in the Mediterranean. Females come ashore at night from May to August, and the hatchlings run for the sea until October.
Dionysios Solomos, born on Zakynthos in 1798, wrote the Hymn to Liberty in 1823, and its first stanzas became the Greek national anthem. He lies in the museum on St Mark's Square beside the poet Andreas Kalvos, another son of the island.
In the 5th century BC Herodotus described how the people of Zakynthos drew pitch from a lake, and the springs still seep near Keri. On the other side of the island, the Panagiotis has been rusting on the sand of Navagio since 1980.
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