Qualla: Agios Andreas, Katakolo

Agios Andreas, Katakolo: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Angpr, CC BY-SA 3.0. Homer mentioned this place twice, which was no small thing. The town of Pheia, sitting on its bay above the Ionian coast, appeared in both the Iliad and the Odyssey — a port city significant enough that the poet found reason to name it in two separate works. Thucydides noted it during the Peloponnesian War. Xenophon visited. Strabo and Polybius and Pausanias all recorded it. Then an earthquake in the sixth century AD swallowed most of it into the sea. What the earthquake left, successive centuries claimed: Byzantine fortress, Frankish castle, Ottoman fire. Today a small settlement called Agios Andreas occupies the site, and most of the ancient city lies submerged in the bay a few meters offshore.

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Image: Angpr | CC BY-SA 3.0

Agios Andreas, Katakolo: A Port the Ancients Knew Well

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Angpr, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pheia was a working harbor, not a monument. Clay lamps, bowls, drinking cups, amphorae, storage jars — the objects excavated in 1957 by archaeologist Nikos Gialouris are the debris of a port that received and sent out ships for centuries. Among the finds were a kouros statue from...

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Image: Angpr | CC BY-SA 3.0

Agios Andreas, Katakolo: Beauvoir: The Castle on the Drowned City

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Angpr, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the earthquake, the Byzantines built a fortress on the ruined acropolis. They called it Pontikokastro. After the Fourth Crusade, Frankish forces under William of Champlitte took the Peloponnese in 1205, and the fortress passed into the Principality of Achaea, the crusader s...

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Image: Angpr | CC BY-SA 3.0

Agios Andreas, Katakolo: Saint Andrew and the Church on the Temple

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Angpr, CC BY-SA 3.0. The settlement that grew up here in later centuries took its name from a church dedicated to Andrew the Apostle, said to have passed through this coast on his missionary journeys. The church was built over the ruins of an earlier ancient temple. It eventually fell into ruin itsel...

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Image: Angpr | CC BY-SA 3.0

Agios Andreas, Katakolo: What the Water Covers

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Angpr, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most of ancient Pheia is gone — not destroyed above ground but sunk below the waterline, dissolved into the sediment of the bay. Divers can see the outlines of walls and foundations in the shallows. The islet of Ichthys still rises just offshore, and on clear days Zakynthos fills...

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Image: Angpr | CC BY-SA 3.0