The admiral who became a lighthouse keeper

On Friday July 22nd at 7.00 pm, an exhibition devoted to the astonishing life of admiral Nikolay Nikolayevich Filosofov opens at the Kythiraikos Syndesmos in Chora (to August 10th).

 

Filosofov was the only son of a distinguished  St. Petersburg family, with its roots deep in the civil and military administration of the empire; his father was for a long time private secretary to Queen Olga of Greece. A naval officer by profession, Filosofov’s first posting was to the armoured cruiser Pamiat Azova on the occasion of its famous round-the-world cruse with the Russian crown prince, the future Emperor Nicolas II.  In the civil war which followed the Bolshevik revolution, Filosofov declared for the Tsar, fighting on till the bitter end with Wrangel’s White army in Crimea. Invited to Greece by Queen Olga, he spent a year with the royal family at the palace in Tatoi before applying to the Greek Lighthouse Service for a position as lighthouse keeper. His last posting was to remote Apolitares lighthouse at the southern tip of Antikythera. There, he met and married Zambia Charchalaki, his third wide, fathering a Greek Filosofov dynasty which endures to this day.

 

A Kythera Municipal Council exhibition organized by the

Kythera Cultural Association.