Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film adaptation: Greek island of Ithaca hopes for a tourism boom

These are sounds that people like to hear in Ithaca. Until now, the island with around 3,000 residents in the Ionian Sea has been away from the main tourist flows and in the shadow of glamorous destinations such as Mykonos and Santorini, although it has a lot to offer holidaymakers with its turquoise waters, olive groves and cypress forests.

The success of Nolan’s film is now awakening people Hope for a tourism boomalthough the director actually didn’t film a single scene on Ithaca despite requests from the island’s administration. The Ithaca of the Hollywood epic is actually the Italian island of Favignana near Sicily.

The mayor had hoped for more

Tavern owner Xhimi Xoxha from the island’s capital Vathi still sees the film as “very good advertising” for the island. “Little by little the film will be watched all over the world,” he says. This arouses the curiosity of tourists.

The mayor of Ithaca, Dionysis Stanitsas, cannot hide his slight disappointment. He had tried to bring at least part of the production to his island. “We contacted the film crew and asked that some scenes be filmed here,” he says. “Unfortunately that wasn’t possible.” Nevertheless, he also expects that more people will be interested in Ithaca in the future. This year the reservations were completed before the film started.

However, visitors to Ithaca will not find any authentic traces of the epic: neither the palace of Odysseus nor any other archaeological traces that could confirm the existence of Homer’s heroes. There are several Ulysses statues in the villages, one of which is right in front of the island’s town hall. There are fishing boats in the harbor named after the nymph Calypso or Odysseus’ son Telemachus.

Souvenir shops offer statues of Homer, wall plates with the Trojan Horse, and T-shirts with Odysseus’ faithful wife Penelope or the one-eyed giant Polyphemus. And on the beach of Dexia, where, according to the story, Odysseus arrived back on Ithaca, tourists can now make themselves comfortable on loungers under parasols.

Bookings have increased since the film’s release

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently thanked director Nolan for the film’s contribution to “refocusing global interest on ancient Greek civilization.” According to figures from tour operator EasyJet Holidays, quoted by Greek news platform Kathimerini, bookings to Greece have increased by 18 percent since the film opened in mid-July.

For visitor Teagan Messing from the USA, the film adaptation of the Odyssey is a good way to get people interested in Homer and mythology. “But he clearly doesn’t stick to the original text,” says the 22-year-old, who studied anthropology and has a tattoo of a caryatid, a Greek column in the shape of a woman, on her arm.

In fact, Nolan has also caused controversy with his cinematic interpretation of the Greek Odyssey. Among the few scenes that were actually filmed in the country are the scenes with the Cyclops Polyphemus in Nestor’s Cave in the Peloponnese. For the archaeologist Spyros Couvaras, the film is of secondary importance anyway. “Homer is behind Nolan’s film,” he says.