Corfu wears four centuries of Venice, fifty years of Britain and 2,700 years of Greek settlement in the same square kilometre. Walk from the Gorgon of the 580 BC Artemis temple to a Serbian war shrine and a Habsburg empress's Achilles.
The ancient city of Korkyra, founded by Corinth in 734 BC. Inside Mon Repos park lie the Temple of Kardaki, the Roman baths and the Doric Artemis temple foundations. Open Wed–Mon 08:30–15:30, closed Tuesdays.
Built around the 580 BC Gorgon pediment from the Artemis temple — the oldest surviving monumental stone sculpture in Greece, 17m wide, with Medusa flanked by panthers. Also the Lion of Menekrates, c. 600 BC.
The Venetian citadel on the twin peaks — the Koryfes that gave Corfu its name. Byzantine origins, rebuilt from 1546 by Sanmicheli; the contrafossa sea moat cut the rock into an island. Climb to the 1840 British lighthouse.
The 1589 church of the island's patron saint, whose mummified body is carried in four annual litanies marking sieges and plagues survived. Its red-domed campanile is the tallest in the Ionians. Then lose yourself in the Venetian alleys.
Built 1819–1824 in Maltese limestone for the British Lord High Commissioner and the Ionian Senate — the first neoclassical building in modern Greece. Now the Museum of Asian Art, 15,000 pieces gathered by Corfiot diplomats.
The arcaded terrace built by the French between 1807 and 1814 on the Rue de Rivoli model, facing the 60,000 m² Spianada — Greece's largest square, cleared as a field of fire for the fortress guns. Order sofrito, veal in white wine and garlic.
Empress Elisabeth of Austria's 1889–1891 retreat, 12km south. After her assassination in 1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II bought it; the Dying Achilles and his 11.5m bronze twin frame the terrace. Used as a hospital and casino later.
Begun 1576 after the second Ottoman siege, finished by the Venetians and remodelled by the British, who added the barracks. The Venetian lion reliefs still crown the gates; the tunnels below ran to the harbour.
A 15th-century basilica holding 90 icons of the Cretan School — painters who fled Ottoman Crete in 1669 and made Corfu the bridge between Byzantine and Venetian art. The coffered wooden ceiling is original.
The Jewish quarter on Velissariou Street, settled from the 12th century. Of roughly 2,000 Corfiot Jews deported in June 1944, some 200 returned; the 1800s Scuola Greca is the only one of four synagogues still standing.
Moustoxydou Street records the winter of 1916, when the Serbian army and government retreated here after crossing Albania. Uniforms, field-hospital kit and photographs of Vido island, where the dead were buried at sea.
In use since 1814 and still tended, with graves of Protectorate officials, their children, and 44 sailors killed in the 1946 Corfu Channel mine explosions. Wild orchids grow between the headstones each spring.