Corfu

It’s easy to understand why Corfu became a playground for the rich and famous in the 19th and 20th centuries. For 400 years this place was under the control of the Venetians. Consequently, many of the buildings and streets look as though they were taken right out of Venice. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Napoleon came here and added a French touch. Next Corfu became a British protectorate for some 50 years. The people of Corfu still have an annual celebration commemorating the day Corfu (Greeks call the island Kerkyra) was incorporated into the kingdom of Greece. Corfu is probably the most cosmopolitan of all the Greek islands.

Life in this lovely resort town is relaxed. In the late nineteenth century, Corfu was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the playground of Empress Elizabeth of Austria. An unusually attractive woman, she was essentially abandoned by her playboy husband. Though they never divorced, they rarely saw each other except on official occasions. She built a palace here called the Achilleon reflecting her love of Achilles and Ancient Greek mythology. She came here to hide out. Beautiful, devoutly pious and perhaps somewhat vain, she often spent the first three hours of the day with her hairdresser arranging her five-foot-long tresses. Known by her friends as Sisi, her name gave rise to a vernacular insult. After Sisi anyone who showed excessively feminine characteristics might be called a “sissy”. Despite her beauty, wealth, power and prestige, she had a rather unhappy life. Her son and his mistress died in a murder-suicide pact at a hunting lodge in Germany in 1889. Sisi never overcame her grief. Empress Elizabeth herself was murdered in the turbulence leading up to World War I. During an official visit to Geneva, Switzerland in 1898 an assassin jumped out of a crowd and stabbed her in the chest.

After World War I a revolution exiled the Greek royal family and declared Greece a republic. Among those expelled was one-year-old Prince Phillip. Less than a year had passed since he was born here on the kitchen table of the royal family’s vacation home on the south side of town. The house still stands, but it is now a private residence and does not offer tours. The Greek royal family became vagabonds, seeking refuge in the palaces of one royal cousin after another. His playboy father died and his mother took vows, became a nun and moved to a convent. Young Phillip made his way to England, then to Germany and Denmark (where he also held a title of nobility), and finally back to England. With the help of his influential uncle, Lord Mountbatten, Phillip was commissioned as an officer in the British Navy. Always his uncle’s protege, Phillip’s career ultimately led him to Buckingham Palace as the Queen’s consort.

You can tour Sisi’s palace. It is still here, along with two others. Corfu also has two sixteenth-century fortresses you can visit. St. Spiridon is the patron saint of Corfu, and we attended the service in his Greek Orthodox church.

The south end of this island is narrow and flat, barely rising above sea level. It’s most characteristic feature is Mouse Island with its tiny chapel. This charming little church is often chosen by brides as their wedding venue. The north part of the island is broad and mountainous. From its peaks one can see all of Kerkyra and over into the snow-capped mountains of Albania. There are beautiful monasteries and turbulent inlets that display the roaring power of the Adriatic surf. From the towering heights of the Palaiokastritsa, one can get an eagle-eye view of a heart-shaped lake where many young Greek men go to propose marriage to their brides.

Life here is definitely relaxed and certainly beautiful, but perhaps we were spoiled by the clean beaches and sparkling streets of Croatia and Montenegro. Like other Greek cities Corfu seems to have more than its share of litter in its streets and graffiti on its walls. But if you can get past that, Corfu is a lovely place to spend some time.Read more