The lake is located two kilometers west of the highway Filippiada – Ioannina, opposite the community of Pantanassa, Arta. Its name has a Slavic origin (Ozero = lake in Russian). In the period of 1950-1955 and on the initiative of Queen Frideriki, elegant buildings that are in harmony with the environment were constructed on the banks of the lake. These buildings served as a Paidoupoli (meaning “a city for children” in Greek) for the care of the orphans of World War II and the Greek Civil War.
Lake Ziros is a major attraction that is relatively unknown to the public as it does not exist on tourist maps on a scale less than 1: 300,000. The buildings of Ziropolis were designed by Austrian architects in 1955. The diameter of the lake is approximately 1000m and its width is 500m. It has an elliptical shape. The maximum depth of the water is more than 25 meters. Ziropoli was an important educational, cultural and economic area until it was almost destroyed by an earthquake in 1965.
