What Is Paxos Known For?

Paxos holds far more olive trees than people, a ratio that traces directly back to a deliberate Venetian policy centuries ago.

Paxos is known first for that olive oil legacy. When Venice ruled the Ionian Islands from 1386 to 1797, officials recognized olive oil as a highly profitable trade commodity and actively encouraged islanders to plant groves, reportedly offering the equivalent of several drachmas for every tree planted. The policy worked well enough that Paxos now holds somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 olive trees, outnumbering its roughly 2,500 permanent residents by close to a hundred to one, and the trees themselves grow taller here, often exceeding seven meters, than the shorter varieties found elsewhere in Greece. At the industry's peak in the early 19th century, 156 separate oil mills operated across the island; only a handful still run regularly today.

Paxos is also known for its own myth of origin, tied to the trident emblem shared by all seven Ionian Islands. According to legend, Poseidon struck the southern tip of Corfu to carve out a peaceful island for himself and his wife Amphitrite, and in the process lost his trident, which local Paxiots later found and adopted as the island's symbol.

That layered history continued well past Venetian rule, since Paxos passed briefly to French control after 1797, then through a joint Russian-Ottoman siege that established a short-lived Septinsular Republic, followed by decades under British protection before formally uniting with Greece in 1864. The island's three villages, Gaios, Loggos, and Lakka, still reflect that Venetian architectural imprint today, connecting Paxos's olive-covered landscape to Corfu and Antipaxos nearby.