Tag: Attraction in Corfu

The Achilleion summer palace was built in the late 19th century on a lush green hill near the village of Gastouri, nine kilometers south of Corfu Town. It was commissioned by Empress Elizabeth of Austria (better known as Sissi), to be built in the neoclassical style on plans by the architects Raffaele Caritto and Antonio Landy. The building stands majestic Read more...

This was the place for state ceremonies, pomp and circumstance, in the time of Venetian rule. The square is enclosed by four symbolic buildings as witnesses to the social and political landscape of bygone days and the significance of the location: the Catholic Cathedral (the Duomo); the domicile of the Catholic Archbishop at the upper part of the square, to Read more...

The great square of Corfu Town nowadays owes its name to the Venetian word spianata, a large open space. That was the requirement of Venetian defensive policy: a great level field, long as a musket-shot trajectory,in front of the Old Fortress. This space was formed into a square in the short years of French rule. It was then that the Read more...

Residential building complex on the Spianada, which was begun under the French empire and forms the main testimony to the French presence on Corfu. The rhythmical repetition of features on the main facade, especially the elegant arcade, reflects the monumental concept of urban design of the Napoleonic period in straight, identical layouts like that of the Rue des Rivoli. The Read more...

The Venetian authorities planned and built the New Fortress on St Mark’s Hill, to the north-west of town, on the insistent requests of Corfiots for added defenses against the Ottoman Turks. Construction started in 1576. This fortress and its subordinate bastions (together representing a monumental piece of fortification engineering), combined with the Old Fortress, formed the town’s main line of Read more...

A headland jutting out into the waves, where between its two peaks the medieval town of Corypho developed (hence Corfu today), was to be transformed by engineers of the Venetian Republic into a fortress immune to siege. The impregnable walls of the Old Fortress were initially erected by the Byzantines and later reinforced by the Anjous. But it was the Read more...

This most representative neoclassical structure in Corfu Town was constructed by the British, then in possession of the Ionian islands, and formally presented to the Lord Governor in 1824. The tufa stone for its building was transported from Malta along with a large number of Maltese workers. It was designed by the British architect Whitmore as a residence for the Read more...