Art And Culture in Corfu (island)

Corfu's culture grew out of the fact that the island was never Ottoman. While mainland Greece spent four centuries inside another empire, Venetian notaries worked here, Italian opera was staged, and children were taught on western curricula. Hence the Ionian Academy, the first university of modern Greece, and hence the habit of balconies, shutters and bell towers that look more like campanili. Even the Easter custom of throwing clay pots from the windows arrived here from Venice.

The chief monument of that line is the Achilleion. The palace was built in 1890 by the Austrian Empress Elisabeth, who was obsessed with Homer: a dying Achilles was placed in the garden and scenes of the Trojan War hung in the halls. After her assassination the palace was bought by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who kept a summer residence here until the First World War. Tours usually combine it with the villages of Sinarades and Pelekas, where ordinary island life survives without the palace part.

One thread leads to the mainland. Meteora — fourteenth-century monasteries on sheer rock pillars, reached for centuries only by rope ladders and nets — is a separate full-day trip, with the ferry to Igoumenitsa. And wine on Corfu is tasted domestically: private tastings are held at your hotel or villa, with local varieties and an explanation of how Ionian winemaking differs from the Aegean.