Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opened in July 2026 and passed a billion dollars in August, and it did that without shooting a single frame on Ithaca. The island that gives the poem its destination was left out of the film entirely. Meanwhile the real Ithaca sits in the Ionian Sea where it always has: 96 km², 2 862 residents at the 2021 census, one road along a spine of hills, and a capital of 1 693 people at the head of a deep bay.
This guide is about that island. It sets out the things to do on Ithaca that are genuinely open, and says plainly what is not. Two of the sites you would come for are closed. Two small museums shut at 15:30. Getting there takes a flight and a ferry. Once you accept that, Ithaca is a good few days.
Nolan's Ithaca is a castle in Sicily
The palace where Penelope holds off the suitors was filmed at the Castello di Santa Caterina, a fifteenth-century fort on the summit of Monte Santa Caterina on Favignana, in the Egadi Islands west of Sicily. The building is abandoned and has no access road: for two weeks the crew went up daily by a makeshift funicular and then on foot, carrying equipment.
The rest of the sea passages went to Italy as well. Lipari and the islet of Basiluzzo, in the Aeolian Islands, stood in for the Sirens and for Scylla, and the coves around Favignana and the small islet of Preveto filled in the coastline.
The choice was deliberate rather than logistical. Nolan wanted a spectacular ruin with nothing modern in the frame, and Ithaca is inhabited: its Homeric geography comes with houses, cars and a working harbour. If you want the full map of where the film was made, we set it out in a separate guide to the filming locations.
The part most guides leave out: the headline sites are shut
Ithaca has three places that are argued over as the palace of Odysseus or as the cave from Book XIII. Two of them cannot be entered at all, and the Municipality of Ithaca says so on its own pages.
| Site | Where it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Cave of the Nymphs (Marmarospilia) | Above the shore at Dexa, a short walk off the road out of Vathy | Closed. The municipality states that since 2001 the cave cannot be visited until the wider area has been developed, and its trail notes add a plainer warning: do not enter, recent work has made the area dangerous |
| School of Homer (Agios Athanasios) | Eastern slopes of the Exogi hill, northern Ithaca | Closed. The site is not open to visits until restoration and preservation work on the newly found monuments is finished |
| Pilikata | Just north of Stavros, beside the northern museum | Open ground, hard to read. The municipality says the site is not easy to access and that you need a guide to find the ancient walls |
This matters for planning, not just for expectations. The School of Homer is the excavation that produced the 2010 claim of a Mycenaean palace complex with a stone entrance step, internal stairs, underground storage and a subterranean water supply. It is the strongest candidate for a real Bronze Age seat on the island, and it is behind a fence. If you build a day around standing in Odysseus's hall, you will spend it looking through wire.
What is open: two small museums, both closing at 15:30
Archaeological Museum of Ithaca, Vathy
On Kallinikou and Gerasimou Stathatou street in Vathy, open 08:30 to 15:30 all year, closed on Tuesdays, telephone +30 26740 32200. The listed ticket is 5 €. The permanent collection is being re-installed, and in the meantime the museum shows a temporary exhibition, "In the Footsteps of Homer: Aetos on Ithaca and the Greek Renaissance", which the ministry lists with free admission. Two different prices are therefore in circulation for the same door; ask at the desk rather than budgeting for one of them.
Archaeological Collection of Stavros
At Pilikata above Stavros in the north of the island, same hours of 08:30 to 15:30, also closed on Tuesdays, ticket 5 €, telephone +30 26740 23955. The finds run from the Early Bronze Age to the Roman period. The pieces worth the trip are fragments of bronze geometric tripods, which matter because the Odyssey has the Phaeacians send Odysseus home with tripods as gifts, and a fragment of a Hellenistic mask associated with Odysseus by inscription.
Both museums close in the early afternoon, and they are at opposite ends of a small island. That single fact shapes the day more than anything else here: museums first, walking and swimming afterwards, and Tuesday is not a museum day at all.
The Homeric ground you can still reach
Away from the two closed sites, the municipality lists no restriction on three more places.
- Alalkomenes, on the slopes of Aetos. The narrow waist of the island, on the hillside above Piso Aetos port. There are settlement remains and stretches of defensive wall, some of it preserved to full height, and the site produced bronze coins struck with the head of Odysseus along with pre-geometric pottery. You arrive at this port on most ferries, so it costs nothing but the climb.
- Loizos' Cave, at Polis Bay. In the northwest corner of the bay that serves as the harbour for Stavros. This is where the ninth-century BC bronze tripods came from, along with the clay mask carrying an inscription to Odysseus and a Corinthian plate. The objects are in the Stavros collection twenty minutes uphill, so see the two together and in that order.
- The "OD" inscription. Carved letters, each roughly 27 by 33 cm, on the old mule road between Aetos and Agios Ioannis on the western slopes. Read as the initials of Odysseus by some, as a coincidence by others. It is a curiosity rather than a monument, and it is on a mule track, so treat it as part of a walk.
Two marked walks, with the numbers
The municipality publishes a set of waymarked routes with lengths and grades. Two of them cover most of what people come to Ithaca for.
Perachori to the Cave of the Nymphs: 3 000 m, easy
The route starts at the old church of Panagia in Perachori, above the cemetery at the highest point of the village, and descends through Palaiochora. Palaiochora was one of the three earliest settlements on Ithaca and the island's capital before the seat moved down to the coast at Vathy; what is left is abandoned houses and the church of St John the Theologian with its stone bell tower, above a long view over Perachori, Vathy and the coves. The path continues past the churches of St Andrew and St Nicholas and comes out at the Cave of the Nymphs, then joins a cobbled road down to the tarmac.
The cave at the end of this walk is the closed one. The municipality's own note is blunt: do not enter, recent work has made the area dangerous. The walk is still worth doing for Palaiochora; the cave is a place you look at from outside.
Anemodouri to the Arethusa Spring: 2 350 m, medium
Take the road south from Vathy towards Marathia and watch for a large sign on the left at Anemodouri. The path drops gradually through low scrub with the whole southeastern coast open below, crosses five ridges, and ends at a steep rock face, a large geological rift, with the spring at its foot. A turn to the left near the end goes down to Pera Pigadi beach.
Two cautions, both from the municipality rather than from us. The route runs through country with no sign of anyone living there, and the last stretch is steep rock above a vertical drop to the spring. This is a morning walk with water and proper shoes, not something to start after a late lunch.
Getting there: there is no airport
Ithaca has no airport, and it never has. Every arrival is a flight plus a ferry, or a drive plus a ferry.
The nearest airport is Kefalonia (EFL), one island to the southwest. Aktion, near Preveza (PVK), also serves the Ionian and connects by road to Lefkada. From Kefalonia airport the usual chain is a taxi or booked transfer to the port at Sami, then the short crossing.
Ithaca has three ferry ports: Piso Aetos, also written Pisaetos, which takes most routes, plus Frikes and Vathy in the north and south.
| From | To | Crossing | Operator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sami, Kefalonia | Piso Aetos | 20 min | Levante Ferries, Ionion Pelagos |
| Fiskardo, Kefalonia | Frikes | 45 min | Ionion Pelagos |
| Poros, Kefalonia | Piso Aetos | 55 min | Levante Ferries |
| Vasiliki, Lefkada | Frikes | 1 h | Ionion Pelagos |
| Meganisi | Piso Aetos | 1 h 45 min | Lefkada Palace |
| Astakos, mainland | Frikes | 2 h | Ionion Pelagos |
| Lefkada | Piso Aetos | 2 h 45 min | Lefkada Palace |
| Astakos, mainland | Piso Aetos | 3 h | Ionion Pelagos |
| Zakynthos | Piso Aetos | 3 h 45 min | Lefkada Palace |
| Patras | Piso Aetos | 3 h 50 min | Levante Ferries |
The durations hold; the departure times do not. Ionian timetables are set season by season and revised locally, and the short northern hops from Fiskardo and Vasiliki run only inside summer windows rather than all year. Check with the operator for the day you are travelling, and if you are connecting from a flight, allow for the fact that a missed crossing on a small route can mean the next day rather than the next hour.
Getting around after you land
The KTEL bus starts in Vathy, close to the central square, and links most of the villages of northern Ithaca. The municipality lists the service but publishes no timetable for it, which tells you how to treat it: useful if it happens to suit you, not something to build a day on.
Taxis run around the clock and wait at Piso Aetos and Frikes for arriving ferries. For July and August the municipality's own advice is to arrange for a taxi to be at the harbour rather than hoping. Cars, scooters and bicycles rent in Vathy. For the beaches with no road, traditional caiques run as sea taxis, including a boat service from Filiatro.
The villages, and the shape of the island
Vathy in the south is the capital and the arrival point for most people, with 1 693 residents around a deep natural harbour. North of it the island narrows at Aetos and then widens again: Stavros sits above Polis Bay, with Frikes and Kioni on the northeast coast and Exogi on the hill above. Anogi and Perachori are the inland villages, both up on the slopes with the views that come with that. The high point is Mount Neritos, a little over 800 m, on the northern half.
The whole of it is 96 km² and under three thousand people, which is the real reason to keep expectations in order. Ithaca is not a place with a queue and a turnstile. It is a place where the museum shuts at half past three and the road ends at a cove.
Where Ithaca sits on the film's map
The pattern of The Odyssey repeats itself: the places in the poem and the places on screen are different places. The film's Troy was shot in Morocco, at the ksar of Aït Benhaddou, while the excavated Troy stands near Çanakkale on the Turkish coast, about five hours from Istanbul, and it is a genuine and reachable day out. We cover that in a separate guide to visiting Troy.
One Greek location did make the film as itself. Acrocorinth, the fortress above ancient Corinth, was used in the shoot, and it is open, large and easy to combine with the Peloponnese; our guide to Corinth has the practical detail.
What to expect, plainly
Ithaca gives you two small museums with real Homeric objects, two marked walks with numbers you can plan against, a set of villages on a green Ionian island, and coves you reach by road or by boat. It does not give you the palace of Odysseus, because the best candidate for it is closed for works, nor the cave from Book XIII, because that has been shut since 2001.
Come for the walks, the harbours and the two museums; take the archaeology as it is rather than as the poem promises. And if what you actually want is the Ithaca you saw on screen, book a flight to Palermo instead, because that Ithaca is a castle on a hill in Sicily.