Corfu in Two Halves: Fog Over Paleokastritsa, Sun on the Old Town

Garnie Holmes

1 day ago

3 min read

Arriving by Water

The ship came into Corfu in a morning haze, with the island low on one side and the mainland mountains across the strait on the other. The water was flat enough to hold the ship's wake for a long way back.

Calm sea off Corfu seen from the side of a cruise ship arriving in morning haze, with headlands low on the horizon

The day split into two halves. A bus tour crossed the island to the west coast first, then came back to Corfu Town for the afternoon. The two halves don't look like the same place.

Paleokastritsa in the Fog

Paleokastritsa is on the northwest coast, a cluster of small bays between wooded headlands. Its monastery was founded in 1225, and one local tradition puts Odysseus's landing on the island of the Phaeacians here, with a rock offshore said to be his ship turned to stone.

By early afternoon, low cloud had come in off the sea. From the ridge above, the bays showed through in pieces: a headland, a strip of turquoise water, a few roofs, then white again.

View from the ridge above Paleokastritsa over wooded hills, with low cloud drifting in along the coast

On the same ridge sits Lakones, a village of narrow houses built tight to the road. The walls are painted ochre and oxblood, with tile roofs and outside stairs.

Across the Hills

The road back across the island runs through the interior hills, mostly olive groves and cypress. By then the cloud had stayed on the coast, and the sky inland was clear. Oleander grew along the roadsides, and a bell tower stood above the trees in the next valley.

The Old Town

Corfu Town is the other half of the island's story. Venice held Corfu from 1386 to 1797, and four days after leaving Venice, the lanes looked familiar: tall shuttered facades in ochre and salmon, stone paving worn smooth. After Venice came France, twice, and then Britain, which governed the Ionian Islands as a protectorate from 1815 until the union with Greece in 1864. The Old Town was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2007.

In Kremasti Square there's a stone wellhead with a carved trough, donated in 1669. It dates from when the city drew its water from cisterns.

Venetian stone wellhead in Kremasti Square, Corfu Old Town, framed by yellow buildings

The British Palace

At the north end of the Spianada, the town's great open square, stands the Palace of St. Michael and St. George. It was built between 1819 and 1824 as the residence of the British Lord High Commissioner, in Greek Revival style and mostly in limestone brought from Malta. Its long colonnade runs the width of the garden front. Today it houses the Museum of Asian Art.

Palace of St. Michael and St. George in Corfu, with the statue of Sir Frederick Adam standing in a circular pool in front

In front of it, a statue of Sir Frederick Adam, the second Lord High Commissioner, stands in a pool with his hand raised toward the water. The gesture refers to the aqueduct he built, which ended the town's dependence on its cisterns. So the Venetian wellhead and the British statue a few streets apart describe the same problem, two centuries apart.

Nearby, on the waterfront, the small church of Panagia Mandrakina stands under a red-domed bell tower, facing the sea.

Church of Panagia Mandrakina with its red-domed bell tower on the Corfu waterfront

Leaving the Island

Past the palace, the road follows the shore, and the water changes color again: clear turquoise over the shallows, with Vido, a small wooded island, sitting just offshore. By late afternoon the ship was pulling away from the port, and the Old Town and its fortress were a pale line along the water.