Welcome to the House of Nicolaos – Ugo Foscolo
Welcome to the website of the Cultural Association of Zakynthos “Ugo Foscolo”. The association was founded in 2009 and has fulfilled its first statutory purpose: the rebuilding of the poet’s house exactly as it stood until the earthquakes of 1953. Today the members and the Board of Directors work to achieve the Association’s other statutory aims.
The life of the poet
The poet Ugo-Niccolò Foscolo (Hellenised as Ougos Foskolos) was born in Zakynthos in 1778, the son of the Venetian-Corfiot doctor Andrea Foscolo and the Greek Diamantina Spathi. He lived in Zakynthos until the age of sixteen and was fortunate to have as his teacher the poet Antonio Martelaos, who instilled in him a love of Greece.
The work of the poet
Ugo Foscolo was a multifaceted personality: poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and at the same time a political fighter, a combatant with the French republicans, a liberal, a dreamer, inspired by fervent patriotism and anti-tyrannical feelings, impulsive and uncompromising.
Museum
The chronicle of Foscolo’s house. From 1885 to the present.
Throughout its long history from 1885 to the present, the little house beside the Church of the Odigitria where Foscolo spent his childhood always drew the attention, respect and pride of the people of Zakynthos. In that period, when prosperity alternated with decline and destruction was followed by renewal, there were always voices stressing Zakynthos’s duty towards its worthy son, the poet of Of the Sepulchres.
Activities
2023. Europe remembers Ugo Foscolo and praises contemporary Zakynthos
2023. Study day at the Parnassos Philological Society on the influence of Ugo Foscolo on Modern Greek Letters
2022. Athens welcomes Ugo Foscolo and the new Museum in Zakynthos
Exhibits
Exhibits
From 2017 the Cultural Association of Zakynthos “Ugo Foscolo” began to create the first collections of works of art by well-known painters on the life and works of the poet. At the same time it began gathering old editions from Greece and abroad dating from the period when the young Foscolo started to write and create in Italy, where he had by then settled. Today there is a substantial number of early printed books that is continually enriched.
The association C.A.Z. “Ugo Foscolo”
The Association today
The Cultural Association of Zakynthos “Ugo Foscolo” was founded in 2009 with the statutory aim of restoring the house where the great poet was born and grew up, re-establishing the Foscolian Library, creating a Museum, supporting scholarly research and promoting the poet’s work. The humble house where the great poet was born and grew up until the age of 16 passed into municipal ownership in 1885 and from 1889 until the earthquake and fire of 1953 housed the renowned municipal Foscolian Library.
Photographic material
