The Byzantine Museum
What was saved from the island's churches after the 1953 earthquake.
**A town rebuilt from nothing after an earthquake erased it** — which is the key to understanding it, and why it is not Corfu. On **12 August 1953** a devastating **earthquake** struck the Ionian islands, destroying Zakynthos almost completely, and a **fire** took what was left. Very little of the Venetian old town survived. The town was rebuilt in the 1950s by **deliberate decision**: low-rise and earthquake-resistant, but with **frontages and arcades imitating the Venetian style** that had been lost. So what you see today is **an honest modern replica of itself**, not a historic town. Its main features are the paved **Solomos Square** on the seafront, the **church of St Dionysios**, the island's patron, with its tall tower, and a **Byzantine Museum** holding **icons and church fragments rescued from under the earthquake rubble** — genuinely the most important thing in the town. ⚠ Do not come expecting Corfu: **this is a working town**, not an old city.
What was saved from the island's churches after the 1953 earthquake.
A paved seafront square with arcades and cafés.
A tall tower and the island patron's church, the one that matters locally.
Zakynthos, 29100 Zakynthos, Greece
**One of the most severe to strike modern Greece, and it reshaped three islands entirely.** ✅ **What happened**: in **August 1953** a sequence of shocks hit the southern Ionian, the largest devastating on **12 August**. **Zakynthos, Kefalonia and Ithaca** were badly hit — most of their buildings destroyed, **and fires then took** what remained in Zakynthos. ✅ **The architectural effect**: what you see on those three islands today is largely **post-1953 construction**, low-rise and on earthquake-resistant foundations. That is why **Corfu looks old and Zakynthos looks modern** although they are neighbours in the same archipelago: **Corfu was not damaged to the same degree**. ✅ **The human effect**: wide emigration from the islands after the disaster. ⚠ **Very little survived in Zakynthos** — which is what makes the Byzantine Museum, holding what was recovered from the rubble, **the most important place in the town**.
**Not in the town, unless for a practical reason.** ⚠ **The town** is a working port: traffic and ferries, no beach to speak of, no old quarter, and noise. **Stay there only** if you have no car and depend on buses and ferries, or if you arrive late and leave early. ✅ **For beaches and quiet**: **Tsilivi** and **Planos** just north of town (close, family-oriented, plenty of options); **Keri** and **Limni Keriou** in the south (far quieter and prettier); and **Volimes and Agios Nikolaos** in the north (near the Blue Caves). ⚠ **And avoid Laganas** if you want quiet or are travelling with family — it is emphatically **the island's loud nightlife centre**, and entirely different in character from the rest of Zakynthos. ✅ **The rule**: with a car → the south or the north. Without one → near the town or Tsilivi.
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