The Emerald Isle: Corfu
December 24, 2009 in Featured Article by Timeshare & Fractional Property Magazine, News & ReviewsItalian architecture, British heritage, a Greek soul and an independent spirit make Corfu an island of contrasts. Like Mallorca, it’s stuck with the “bargain vacation” tag. But head north and you’ll see the island in a whole new light if you just take the time to explore the Corfu you never knew.
Ah, the Greek islands. Six thousand of them, with only 220 inhabited. The ones we’ve heard of are packed in summer, the ones we haven’t remain unmarked by the footprints of tourism (too small, too barren, too remote).
The classic image of a Greek island, like Mykonos, is cube-shaped white houses sprinkled over a sunbaked landscape that leads down to a small port in a shimmering blue sea. White and blue, the colors of the Greek flag. But look at a map of the islands and pan left, towards Corfu, and the colors change. No parched golden landscape, no sugar lump houses.
The hills are alive in Corfu and they’re green – bursting with Technicolor wildflowers and dotted with farmhouses
and millionaires’ mansions. Corfu is almost as green as Ireland in winter, but the landscape is much more Tuscany. It’s not just the cypresses and the four-and-a-half million olive trees that look Italian; it’s the taste of Italy that lingers
in taverna kitchens and the beautiful but decaying Venetian-style buildings of Corfu Town that reflect its Italian heritage. The Venetians ruled Corfu and her five sister islands from 1386 (when they became a prized part of Venice’s maritime empire because of their strategic position) until its collapse in 1797 (and Corfu is still a main cruise and ferry gateway to Italy).
They paid the Corfiots well for cultivating olives, which explains the number of olive groves.
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