Corfu City

A Too-Short Visit on a Drizzly Afternoon

Arriving in Corfu

Greece

Corfu

Leaving home just after 4am, we caught the 7.45 flight from Birmingham, arriving in Corfu 3½ hours later at 13.15 (local time). We were picked up by a taxi driver whose name may or may not have been Spiros and taken to our hotel via the offices of a ferry company where we collected our tickets for tomorrow.

Between checking-in and departing for Albania at 9 next morning we had time to investigate the island’s capital – a cursory glance maybe, but long enough to realise it deserved more.

Corfu, with abundant cheap tourist flights, is ideally placed for a tour of southern Albania

Lunch in Corfu

After taking some pictures of the ferry port from our hotel window…

We have to walk down there to find the ferry for Albania tomorrow morning

...we went to find a late lunch. Lynne had never been to Greece before and my experience was limited to a day in Athens in 1966 (I was 15), but with a basic knowledge of Greek food and expecting multi-lingual menus on a holiday island it seemed – and indeed was - a simple task.

I picked stuffed vine leaves and Lynne chose pork doner kebab in pita bread – the chips were not mentioned on the menu. The café owner talked us into sharing a dish of tzatziki with excellent crusty bread and then suggested we try the more expensive Corfu beer. This enthusiast run micro-brewery opened on the island in 2006 and produces a wide range of beers. Their (darkish) pilsner was seriously good; had we been staying longer we would have tried more.

Dolmadaki, tzatziki and gyro, Corfu

Corfu: A Walking Tour in the Rain

We then set off on a walking tour. In June, sunshine and a temperature of 28º would be typical, we got rain and 23º - oh, well.

With Old Corfu City a UNESCO World Heritage site and the island’s tourism industry thriving we would have expected some immunity to the financial woes that have beset Greece for the last decade, but the town looked a bit down at heel. Grass grew through cracks in the pavement and the road to the ferry port had a number of derelict buildings.

That said, there are several pleasing parks and in one purple bougainvillea nodded above a dozen tables with chess boards. Nobody was playing – but who plays chess in the rain?

Chess boards beneath the bougainvillea - and the rain - Corfu

Venetian Corfu

The Old and New Forts

The city has two forts, an old one by the sea…

Corfu's Old Fort

…and a new one on the hill behind.

Corfu's New Fort

Both were built by the Venetians in the 16th century, the ‘New’ Fort being barely 30 years younger than the ‘Old’ Fort. I only noticed the Venetian Lion of St Mark over the gate to the New Fort in the evening as we walked back to our hotel after dinner.

Venetian Lion of St Mark over the entrance to the New Fort, Corfu

After the usual shifting loyalties of antiquity, Corfu became part of the Byzantine Empire, forming a strategic link between its east and west. As the Byzantine Empire started to fade the Venetian Republic took over, ruling the island from 1386 until Napoleon destroyed the power of Venice in 1797. The rest of Greece, meanwhile, was under Ottoman rule. Although the Ottomans tried hard to take Corfu in the 16th century – hence the two forts – they were repulsed.

The old town has tall buildings and narrow passageways in typical Venetian style. It is all pedestrianised but as some streets are too narrow for cars…

The narrow streets of the old city, Corfu

…and others have too many steps there is little choice.

Street in the old city, Corfu

Exploring the narrow streets and looking at the many shops we found much we would have liked to buy and take home – mostly food and drink – but this was the first day of our travels and we were reluctant to cart our trophies all the way round Albania and back.

Narrow shopping streets in Corfu

Corfu After the Venetians

After the Venetians' demise Corfu became a Departement Français, then briefly the capital of the self-governing federation of the Ionian islands under Ottoman suzerainty, and then French again. After the defeat of Napoleon, the Treaty of Paris (1815) created the United States of the Ionian Islands under the protection of the United Kingdom.

Corfu As a British Protectorate

The United States of the Ionian Islands

The British stayed in Corfu until 1864, the High Commissioner residing in Corfu City. During this time the British built new roads, improved the water supply system, upgraded the French founded Ionian Academy into Greece’s first modern university and made Greek the official language.

They also left some neo-classical buildings around the huddle of the old Venetian town, including the Palace of Saints Michael and George, now Corfu’s highly regarded Museum of Asian Art.

The Museum of Asian art, Corfu

Cricket is another legacy of British rule. The game is largely unknown in the rest of Greece, but the Hellenic Cricket Federation (based in Corfu) organises a Greek national championship involving 20 clubs, almost all of them from Corfu. The island is also an understandably popular venue for tours by clubs from more established cricket playing nations. The grassy expanse of Spianada Square facing the Museum of Asian Art is maintained as a cricket ground.

Spaniada Square, Corfu. A matting wicket and an outfield ready for the mower

Meanwhile on the Mainland

While the Corfiotes were peacefully learning cricket, Greece was busy removing the Ottomans. By 1828 the fighting was mostly over and Ioannis Kapodistrias, a Corfiote (we had landed at the airport named after him) became the first head of state of a modern independent Greece. Kapodistrias was assassinated in 1831 and the Conference of London was hastily convened to ensure Greece had a stable government and internationally agreed borders. Greece, the Great Powers (Britain, France and Russia) decided, should be a monarchy and they offered the throne to Prince Otto of Bavaria (why? search me, but spare German princelings were fashionable in the 19th century).

Newly independent Greece, much smaller than modern Greece, was anxious to acquire those surrounding territories traditionally inhabited by Greeks, including Corfu and the other Ionian Islands. Britain had no problem with this in principle, but developed major problems with King Otto, so hung on until Otto was deposed in 1862 and the Greek National Assembly obediently elected Prince William of Denmark to be the next king.

Corfu Becomes Part of Greece - Links with the British Royal Family

Greece received the Ionian Islands as a coronation present when Prince William of Denmark became King George 1 of Greece (why George? Dunno). George I would become the grandfather of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Greece as it was in 1832, and how it became what it is now
Thanks to Wikipedia, Adam Carr and Dr Kay

The Duke of Edinburgh was born on Corfu in 1921, in Mon Repos, a villa just too far away for us to walk in the rain, not that there is anything to see. How this grandson of a Greek King and great-grandson of a Danish King became an officer in the British Royal Navy and married the heir to the British throne is another story.

The Durrells and St Spyridon

I am surprised to have persevered this far without mentioning ‘The Durrells’ other than an oblique reference in paragraph 1. Based on Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy it was undemanding, feel-good Sunday evening viewing, I may have watched all 26 episodes over the last four years. Spiros, the taxi driver who takes the Durrell family under his wing after their arrival on Corfu, was played by Alexis Georgoulis. It was a nuanced performance giving Spiros humanity, compassion and the ability to be spun round by his own moral compass. In the 1987 version called, like the first book in the trilogy, My Family and Other Animals, Spiros was played by Brian Blessed – a national treasure, perhaps, but a total stranger to ‘nuance.’ My memory of the book is that Spiros was closer to the Brian Blessed version, but as I read it the early 60s, my memory may be unreliable.

And that paragraph was prompted by catching sight of the bell tower of the Church of St Spyridon down a narrow alley.

The bell tower of St Spyridon's, Corfu City

St Spyridon, as Spiros tells the Durrells, is the patron saint of Corfu and that Spiros is (or was then) the commonest boy’s name on the island.

Outside St Spyridon's, Corfu City

St Spyridon was born around 270 in Cyprus. He was a shepherd until his wife died, then went into a monastery where he worked his way up, becoming a bishop and playing an important part in the Council of Nicaea (325). He is credited with several miracles and died in Cyprus in 348. He never visited Corfu during his life. When the Arabs took Cyprus his body – which was found not have decayed (another miracle) - was taken to Constantinople, and when that fell to the Ottomans in 1543 he was moved to Corfu, where he is credited with expelling the plague from the island and defending it from the Turks – quite a trick from beyond the grave.

His body, which appears to have undergone natural mummification, lies in a chapel to the right of the altar. Hemmed in by other buildings, a satisfactory photograph of the outside is impossible, while photographs of the inside are forbidden and St Spyridon is closely watched. He features prominently in an early anecdote in My Family and Other Animals so I wanted a photo, but I had to settled for a good look and I have ‘borrowed’ a picture from his own website.

St Spryidon in his casket

Edward Lear

Making our way back to the seaward side, we came across the residence of Edward Lear. Best known now as a nonsense poet, Lear was also a traveller, artist and illustrator. Corfu was his winter base from 1855, through the final years of the British Protectorate and after until he finally moved to San Remo in 1870. According to the plaque he spent part of that time in this house – I think the graffiti is later.

Edward Lear's residence, Corfu

That was the end of our walking tour, though we did stroll down to the ferry port to see how long the walk would take in the morning (about 15mins).

Dinner in Corfu

Being in Greece it seemed appropriate to go out about 8 o’clock for a glass of ouzo – the lovely little appetizer, cheese, olives and ham came gratis.

Pre-prandial ouzo, Corfu

We then headed for a restaurant we had ear-marked earlier. Ordering grilled squid we asked about bottled wine as the menu only offered carafes. For a steep €25 we were offered a Malagouzia from Monemvasia in south-east Greece. Malagouzia is a Greek variety once thought extinct that has grown in popularity since its rediscovery in the 1970s. A fully dry, clean and well-made wine it had an austerity that made up for acidity lost to the southern sun. Usually described as ‘floral’ it did not seem that to us, but then floral would not suit squid. An unusual wine to our palates, but a perfect partner to a perfectly grilled squid.

As fine a grilled squid as one could wish for, Corfu

Albania

Part 1: Ksamil on the Albanian Riviera
Part 2: Butrint and the Blue Eye
Part 3: Gjirokastër
Part 4: Berat
Part 5: Tirana
Part 6: Tirana to Saranda

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Corfu: A Fleeting Visit