Monastery of St. John the Baptist

The Monastery of St John the Baptist, or Prodromos, on Zakynthos holds the remnants of a defensive tower built in the early 17th century. The monastery itself was founded at the start of that same century, and the cylindrical tower was raised to offer protection against pirate raids. A 1753 inventory records two churches, seven houses and one defensive tower, which gives a sense of the complex's size in its prime. The monastery survived the great earthquake of 1953, but the tower did not: it collapsed then, and only part of its base remains today. What survives is a ruined cylindrical tower, a quiet fragment of post-Byzantine defensive architecture on an island more often associated with Venetian elegance than with fortification. The base alone now marks a structure that once stood watch over the monks and their community.