Byzantine Museum of Zakynthos — Art That Survived the Earthquake
On August 12, 1953, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Zakynthos and destroyed 80% of the island’s buildings. The town of Zakynthos was almost entirely levelled. The churches that had stood for centuries collapsed. The monasteries, the palaces, the bell towers — gone in 90 seconds.
What survived, in many cases, were the contents. Icons were carried out of rubble. Frescoes were carefully removed from standing sections of wall. Carved wooden iconostases were reassembled piece by piece. The Byzantine Museum of Zakynthos was created specifically to house and display this rescued art — everything that outlasted the earthquake that destroyed its original context.
The result is a collection that should not be this good on an island of this size, but is.
The Collection
The museum is arranged across two floors in a neoclassical building on Solomos Square in Zakynthos Town — itself a reconstruction, the original square having been destroyed in 1953.
Ground floor: The large-scale rescued works. This includes an entire section of carved wooden iconostasis (the screen that separates the sanctuary from the nave in Orthodox churches), reassembled from fragments retrieved from multiple destroyed churches. Gilded, painted, and carved with a detail that requires close examination — this was a month’s work at minimum for the craftsmen who originally made it, and a year’s work for the conservators who put it back together.
Also on the ground floor: scale models of churches that no longer exist, showing Zakynthos Town as it was before 1953. These models are remarkable documents — they show a town that looked substantially different from the reconstructed version, with a different relationship between built and open space.
First floor: The Ionian School paintings. This is the reason art historians come to Zakynthos.
The Ionian School
After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453) and Crete (1669), Greek artists relocated to Ionian islands that remained under Venetian control. On Zakynthos, in contact with Venetian and later other Italian painting, they developed a hybrid style: Orthodox iconographic subjects and Byzantine compositional conventions rendered in Venetian-influenced technique, with oil paint, realistic modelling of faces, and natural backgrounds.
The result is something that looks like neither Byzantine icon-painting nor Italian Renaissance painting and somehow more interesting than both. You can trace the argument happening in individual works — the tension between flat Byzantine gold backgrounds and attempts at atmospheric perspective; between hieratic, symbolic compositions and the Western impulse toward naturalism.
Key works to find: Nikolaos Koutouzis (late 18th century) represents the Zakynthian School at its most Venetian-influenced; Dionysios Solomos (not the poet — an earlier painter of the same name) represents an earlier, more Byzantine sensibility. The comparison between their work tells the whole story of the school.
Practical Details
Location: Solomos Square, Zakynthos Town
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 08:00–15:00 (hours may vary; confirm locally)
Entry: €3 per person; free on certain national holidays
Duration: 1–1.5 hours for a complete visit
Photography: Permitted without flash
Accessibility: Ground floor fully accessible; first floor via stairs
The museum is air-conditioned — an underrated consideration in July and August. The attached gift shop stocks reproductions, scholarly catalogues, and some genuinely good-quality prints of Ionian School works.
Combining with Solomos Square
The museum is on Solomos Square, the main public space of Zakynthos Town. The square is named for Dionysios Solomos, the Zakynthian poet who wrote the national anthem of Greece (the ‘Hymn to Liberty’). His tomb, and that of Andreas Kalvos, another Zakynthian national poet, is in the square’s mausoleum. This combination — museum, square, mausoleum — makes for a coherent half-day of Zakynthian cultural history.
