The island of Zakynthos consists of fertile plains and mountains to the south west. The climate is Mediterranean. It has dense vegetation. It produces olive oil, grapes and citrus. The island has an airport called Dionysios Solomos and is located to the southeast. Also in the southwest is the national marine park on the island of Zante with the famous turtles on the island, an endangered species that is found mainly in Laganas Bay the Careta turtles.
Zakynthos, according to Homer was called Iliessa meaning island with many foreststs ,the island was named from the first settler of Zakynthos the son of the King of Frygia Dardanos. Then it was conquered by Arkeisios, a descendant of the King of Kefalonia Kefalos, Laertis father, and grandfather of Odysseus. So Zakynthos became part of the Kingdom of Odysseus who participated with twelve ships in the Trojan war. After his return, however, and the murder of the suitors from which twenty were from Zakynthos, the Zakynthos people revolted and won their island from the Kingdom of Odysseus. In the years following the spirit of the time established also in Zakynthos a new regime, the Republic.
During the Persian wars Zakynthos remained neutral while the island involved in the Peloponnesian war as an ally of Athens. Zakynthos concurred by the Macedonians of Alexander the Great and later the by the Romans, who had been granted relative autonomy. According to local tradition, Christianity was spread to the island by Mary Magdalene in 34 AD when the ship that was carry her to Rome stopped briefly in Zakynthos.
During the Byzantine times Zakynthos was attacked by pirates and Vandals. In 1185 Zakynthos was occupied by the Normans of Sicily , who detached them from the Byzantine Empire. The island later was occupied by the Venetians and remains under the Venetian domination until 1798. French and then Russians conquered the island temporarily until 1800 when Zakynthos along with other islands in the Ionian became the first independent Greek state under the predominance of the Sultan. The 1809 th French returned and in 1815 was created the United State of the Ionian Islands, which came under the protection of the British until 1864 when Zakynthos united with Greece.
