Corfu - A Tale of Two Fortresses, Corfu, Greece

It seemed like such a simple plan at the time. Catch the local bus into Corfu town or Kerkyra and make my way to one of the two fortresses I had seen from the ferry when I arrived on the island of Corfu . I knew very little about the island or its main town as my visit was unexpected – I was on my way home from Albania. I did know the old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and that it is strategically located at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea. For this reason, the Venetians used the island for four centuries to defend the trade routes of the Republic of Venice against the Ottoman Empire. The Venetians not only constructed defensive forts but they also built houses in the old town. The Venetians ruled the island for four centuries, until the French took possession at the beginning of the nineteenth century. After the French there was a period of British occupation until Corfu and the other Ionian Islands became part of Greece.

There was only one drawback to my plan. When I got off the bus in Plateia Georgiou Theotoki (San Rocco Square) I had no idea which direction to take. I walked along Georgiou Theotoki street thinking that would take me in the right direction. Instead it led me to an unusual monument dedicated to Kostas Georgakis. Georgakis was a Corfu student studying geology in Italy. In September 1970 he set himself alight in Genova as a protest against the Greek military dictatorship. At the time, his death caused a sensation in Greece and later the Municipality of Corfu commissioned Dimitris Korres to create a memorial in his honour. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).