Category: Culture

I notice ironies. Or at least, things that strike me as ironies. The Venetian Ionian Islands, like Venetian Crete, was run as a feudal kind of place. When Napoleon’s troops came to town, after Napoleon had kicked aside what little was left of the Venetian Republic, the people ceremonially burnt the Libro d’Oro, the listing […]

I came out of the Solomos museum sobered. Through my trip to Zante, I’ve been doing cute acerbic asides about the museum name (Solomos and Illustrious Zacynthians), and about how much I dislike the poetry of Kalvos. I’m going to ease up on that. There is a tragedy to Kalvos’ life that deserves a bit […]

I forgot to post this earlier when I was going through the Post-Byzantine museum. It’s a link back home to Crete. This icon of Our Lady of the Village of Episkopi was brought to Zante from Crete by refugees from the fall of Crete in 1669. “Cretan” in Zante meant “refugee” for a very long […]

Nougat and sesame bars (παστέλι) are everywhere here. It seems to me more like 20 than 2 workshops making the stuff. Picked up a sample, pictured. … And yes. They were some of the nougat and sesame bars I’ve ever tasted.

Attentive readers will recall the brutalist disaster of the regional government offices in Corfu. I attach for your consideration the regional government offices of Zante. Complete with busts of local notables. This is how you actually do it. Even if you don’t make your air conditioning units an architectural feature.

This Church of the Ascension grabbed my attention, because of how its bell tower dominated its Street, south side of town. It’s a recent church, it turns out, not a restoration: 1980. But the icons over the gate are too Western to have been painted in this past century, the century of Kontoglou’s Byzantine Revival. […]

The church of St Dionysius is stately, Byzantine, and full of good, old school narrative frescoes: I was impressed by its Creation of the World. The frescoes give away that this is a recreation of a Byzantine-style original. Icons were brought back to Byzantine styling in the 20th century, but frescoes were not revived. The […]

As you head further south in Zante Town, the buildings gradually scale down, the streets get dustier, the shops less touristy. And that’s hardly an unfamiliar gradient. Which is why this palatial complex of offices and luxury apartments, among those alleys, makes no sense at all. It pops out of nowhere in an otherwise sleepy […]

The Solomos museum, and next to it the Catholic Church of St Mark’s. Solomos got the Central Square named after him; this square, one block back, is still St Mark’s. Even though the museum was originally an Orthodox church. It helps that the Venetians not have Orthodoxy as their state religion. Greek Catholics exist, and […]