Corfu Island - Podikonisi

“Corfu, Corfu with the Podikonisi…” A green rock in the middle of the sea is Corfu’s trademark. The legendary Podikonisi, at the entrance of the Chalkiopoulo lagoon is one of the sights you can admire but you can’t touch.

As it is a natural museum, visitors are forbidden to walk and stay on its grounds so that the virgin habitat is kept intact. If you insist on visiting the island you should know that you are going to stay there just for a few minutes and under the guards’ strict monitoring. Unless you are lucky and you are in Corfu on the 6th of August, day of celebration for the monastery "The Transformation of the Saviour", when you can visit for adoration. It is the only day of the year that it is allowed to enter the interior of the island.

The monastery, built in Byzantine Rhythm is the unique building of the little island. You can get to Podikonisi, only during the summer, by boat from the cosmopolitan Kanoni, a place where you can enjoy the enchanting view of the green island from anyway; from the island of Vlacherna, where the monastery of the same name can be found or from Perama. During the last years works of infrastructure have taken place there, the marina being one of them, so that the boats can park with safety.

The Podikonisi, Corfu’s most photographed sight takes its name because of its tiny size. However due to its Lilliputian dimensions it holds a magnificent role in the myth. In Homer’s Odyssey we learn that Corfu, the island of the Feaki, was the last stop for Ulysses in his much afflicted journey back home to Ithaka. According to the myth, Podikonisi was Ulysses boat in reality, which god Poseidon transformed during a storm into the green rock we all know. 

PODIKONISI