Standing on a ferry as it waits to dock on the Greek island of Ithaca, Giorgia Ongarato is only too keen to talk about the Odyssey, the epic poem that inspired Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film.
For the 50-year-old Italian lawyer, visiting Ithaca, widely believed to be the island home of Odysseus in Homer’s epic, had long been a dream.
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“I studied Greek when I was a child, and I studied the Odyssey,” said Ongarato, who arrived wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Odyssey” in ancient Greek alongside a line from the poem.
While Nolan’s film was not her introduction to the story of the hero battling his way home from the Trojan War, she is also a fan of the movie, describing it as “wonderful”.
Now, businesses and officials on Ithaca are hoping the blockbuster will inspire many more travellers to follow in her footsteps.
A tourism boost for Ithaca
Located in the Ionian Sea off the west coast of mainland Greece, Ithaca remains far removed from the country’s major tourist hubs.
Despite its clear waters, bays and landscape covered with olive and cypress trees, the island has never attracted visitors on the scale of some of Greece’s better-known destinations.
But Nolan’s The Odyssey could change that.
There is, however, one twist: not a single scene from the film was actually shot on Ithaca.
Although several Greek locations were used during production, the decision to leave Ithaca out disappointed some of the island’s roughly 3,000 residents.
Xhimi Xoxha, who runs a restaurant in the island’s capital Vathi, said he was pleased the movie was already “generating publicity for the island” and expects the benefits to continue.
Ithaca mayor Dionysis Stanitsas also described the publicity as “tremendous”, although he admitted he had hoped the island itself would appear on screen.
“We had reached out to the production team and asked that some scenes be filmed here on the island,” he said. “Unfortunately, that wasn’t feasible.”
The mayor is now expecting demand to rise next year. The island was already fully booked for the current season by the time the film was released worldwide on July 16.
“As more people see it, they will begin planning trips to visit the island,” he said.
Following in the footsteps of Odysseus
Visitors should not expect to find a grand palace belonging to Odysseus or a major archaeological site confirming the existence of the Homeric hero.
Instead, references to the Odyssey are scattered across the island.
Statues of Odysseus and Homer can be found in village squares and around the town hall, while boats in the small port carry names including “Telemachus”, Odysseus’s son, and “Calypso”, the goddess and nymph who held him captive.
Souvenir shops sell busts of Homer and Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, alongside T-shirts featuring the Cyclops Polyphemus, one of the monsters encountered during his journey. Visitors can even pick up wall plates decorated with the Trojan Horse.
At Dexia beach, a short distance from the shops and restaurants of the port, tourists relax beside the green waters surrounded by the sound of cicadas.
According to legend, this is where Odysseus finally landed after years of travelling.
Archaeologist Spyros Couvaras expects the film to lead to a significant increase in visitors, particularly as travellers increasingly look beyond beaches for history and mythology.
He believes the renewed interest has a clear “driving force”.
“But behind Nolan’s film stands Homer,” he said.
Source: Khaleej Times