Corfu: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Corfu is the one part of Greece with no Ottoman period, and everything you walk past here follows from that. Venice held the island for four hundred years, withstood four sieges, and the town was built as the defence itself — a square cleared for a field of fire, two fortresses, and tall narrow houses because there was no room inside the walls. Then came the French and the British, who added arcades, a palace and cricket. Two hours, flat, and the museums shut at three.

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A short history of Corfu

Corfu, also known as Kerkyra, was a colony of Corinth as early as the 8th century BC. From 1386 to 1797 it was ruled by the Venetians, and the Ottomans, who besieged it several times, never managed to take it, which is why the old town looks more Italian than Greek. After a period of British rule it was united with Greece in 1864. In 1890 Empress Sisi built the Achilleion palace here. In June 1944 the Germans deported about 1,800 of the island's Jews to Auschwitz, and most of them did not return. In 2007 the old town was declared a World Heritage Site.

The ten best sights in Corfu

1
Corfu Town
Four hundred years of Venice built it, and no Ottoman ever took it — the only Greek town that can say so
2
The Spianada
The largest square in Greece, and it is empty because the Venetians demolished what stood here
3
The Liston
Arcades built by the French and modelled on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris
4
The Old Fortress
On a rock cut off from the town by a moat the Venetians dug through solid stone
5
The New Fortress
New in 1576, and the tunnels under it run most of the way to the sea
6
Saint Spyridon
The island’s patron lies here, and four times a year he is carried through the streets
7
Mon Repos
A British governor’s villa in a park, and Prince Philip was born in it in 1921
8
Kanoni
The view point over the lagoon, named for a cannon the French left on it
9
Pontikonisi
The islet with one chapel on it, said to be the ship of Odysseus turned to stone
10
Achilleion
Built for an Austrian empress, bought by a German emperor, and later a casino

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What is an audio walk?

Tours in Corfu →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Corfu:

Free walking tours in Corfu

The town the Ottomans never took

The Old Fortress · The Venetians cut a moat through solid rock to separate this headland from the town, which turned it into an island and the town into something that could be given up without losing the fortress. Four Ottoman sieges failed against it, the last in 1716 — and because they failed, Corfu is the only Greek region that never came under Ottoman rule.
The Spianada · The largest square in Greece is empty for a military reason: the Venetians demolished the houses that stood here so that the guns of the fortress would have a clear field of fire. And on that cleared ground the British, who held the island from 1814 to 1864, laid out a cricket pitch — which is still there, and Corfu still has the only cricket clubs in Greece.
The Liston · Built under French rule between 1807 and 1814 and modelled directly on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris. The name is the harder part: a liston was the list of noble families entitled to walk under the arcades, and everyone else used the square. The cafés there now charge for the same privilege by other means.
Saint Spyridon · The body of the island’s patron lies in a silver case here, and he is credited with turning back the plague twice and the Ottoman army once. Four times a year he is carried through the streets standing upright. And the practical consequence is in the phone book: a very large share of the men on this island are called Spyros.
Museum of Asian Art · The palace was built for the British Lord High Commissioner in the 1820s, and it now holds ten thousand objects from China, Japan and India — the collection of one Greek diplomat who gave it to the state in 1927. It is the only museum in Greece devoted entirely to Asian art, and it is in the least likely building for it.
Archaeological Museum · One object fills a room: the Gorgon pediment from the temple of Artemis, carved around 580 BC and seventeen metres wide. It is among the oldest large stone sculptures in Greece, and the Gorgon in the middle of it is three metres tall and was meant to frighten anyone approaching the temple.

Empresses, emperors and a stone ship

The south of the island is where Europe came to stay. An Austrian empress built a palace to her dead son’s taste, a German emperor bought it after she was murdered, a British governor’s villa produced a British prince, and off the end of it all sits an islet that the ancients decided was a ship turned to stone. Half a day, a car or the bus, and the Achilleion fills with coaches by eleven.

Mon Repos · A British High Commissioner built this villa in 1831 and later gave it to the Greek royal family. On the tenth of June 1921 Prince Philip, later Duke of Edinburgh, was born in it — and eighteen months later the family was evacuated from Corfu on a British warship, the baby carried aboard in a fruit box.
Kanoni · The name is French: a cannon the French army left on this point in the early nineteenth century, and the view below it has been the island’s postcard ever since. The causeway across the lagoon is walkable, and the runway of the airport runs along the far side of the same water.
Pontikonisi · The tradition is that this is the Phaeacian ship that carried Odysseus home, which Poseidon turned to stone in sight of the harbour as a punishment. There is one Byzantine chapel on it and nothing else, and it opens to visitors on one day a year.
The Achilleion · Empress Elisabeth of Austria built it in 1890 and filled it with Achilles, because her son had killed himself and she wanted a hero who died young. She was assassinated in Geneva in 1898, and Kaiser Wilhelm the Second bought the palace from her heirs — and replaced her dying Achilles with a triumphant one, in armour, facing north.
Gardiki Castle · An octagonal Byzantine fortress standing alone in a field, built in the thirteenth century by the Despot of Epirus. There is no hill under it and no town around it, which is unusual — it was built to control the plain and the lagoon behind it, and the stones in its walls were taken from older buildings.
Korission Lagoon · Five square kilometres of brackish water kept apart from the sea by a strip of dune, and the Venetians cut the channel that feeds it. It is a protected site: flamingos stop here on migration, and the dune behind it carries a juniper forest that grows straight out of the sand.

Three million olive trees

Corfu is green in a way no Aegean island is, and that is not weather alone — it is Venetian policy. The Republic paid a bounty for every olive tree planted here, and the islanders planted somewhere between three and four million of them, left unpruned so they grew tall. The result is a forest with villages in it, a mountain with Albania behind it, and a west coast of cliffs. A full day and a car; the mountain road is narrow.

Paleokastritsa · Six coves under a headland with a monastery on top of it, founded in 1225 and still working. The water here is deep straight off the rock, and the sea caves along the cliff are reached by small boat from the beach. Lawrence Durrell wrote that this was where he learned the shape of the island.
Angelokastro · A Byzantine castle on a peak three hundred metres straight above the sea, and it was never taken — not by the Ottomans in 1537, 1571 or 1716. It had no permanent garrison worth the name; the villagers of the north-west went up into it when ships appeared and held it themselves.
Old Perithia · A village of stone houses at six hundred metres that had eight churches and about twelve hundred people, and emptied in the twentieth century. It was built up here for two reasons — pirates on the coast, and malaria in the marshes below. When both ended, so did the reason to live on a mountain, and everyone went down.
Mount Pantokrator · Nine hundred and six metres, the high point of the island, with a monastery at the top that was founded in 1347 and a forest of transmitter masts beside it. On a clear day you see the whole island at once and the Albanian mountains behind it, and Italy is sometimes visible to the west.
Kassiopi · A fishing harbour with the ruins of a castle above it, and the Albanian coast is two kilometres across the water. The Roman emperor Nero sang here, by the account of Suetonius, at the temple that stood where the church now is — on his way to compete in the Greek games.
Myrtiotissa · Reached down a track too steep for most cars, between cliffs with a monastery in the trees above it. Lawrence Durrell called it the loveliest beach in the world in Prospero’s Cell, which he wrote here in the 1930s — and the sentence has been doing the work of a signpost ever since.

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Getting to Corfu and getting around

Corfu Airport · Three kilometres from town, and the runway ends at the lagoon beside Pontikonisi
Corfu Port · Ferries from Italy and from Igoumenitsa dock here, and the Italian crossing is overnight

Cheap eats in Corfu

Corfu food is Venetian and nothing else in Greece tastes like it. Pastitsada is meat cooked for hours in tomato, cinnamon and clove over thick pasta; sofrito is veal in garlic, vinegar and parsley; bourdeto is fish in a sauce of red pepper that is deliberately too hot. All three came off Venetian ships, and all three are cooked at home more than in restaurants. The going rate for a souvlaki is a few euro and for a plate of pastitsada three or four times that.

The market lane, Corfu Town · A few euro, standing, and open past midnight
Garitsa · The bay walk, and the counters open onto it
Boukari · Four tavernas on one road and the fish is from the boat
Kassiopi · The harbour tables, and bourdeto is the dish here
Lefkimmi · The island’s second town, and nothing here is for visitors
Doukades · One taverna in a village square, and it has been there for decades
Agios Mattheos · Village tavernas under the mountain; meat, not fish
Messonghi · Where the river meets the sea, and the eels come from it

Museums in Corfu

Four collections, and the reason they are here is that Corfu was never Ottoman: the libraries, the icons and the archives survived, and Greek scholars fled here from everywhere else. The first university in modern Greece was founded on this island, in 1824.

Archaeological Museum · The Gorgon pediment fills a room; closed Tuesdays as a rule
Museum of Asian Art · In the British palace; the only one of its kind in Greece
Antivouniotissa · A church kept as a church, with ninety icons in it
Banknote Museum · Every note the Ionian Bank printed, in its own building
Folklore Museum, Sinarades · A nineteenth-century house left furnished as it was

Nature and day trips near Corfu

Three to four million olive trees, planted under a Venetian bounty and never pruned low, which is why they are tall and why the island is a forest. Add a mountain of nine hundred metres, a protected lagoon and a west coast of cliffs, and Corfu has more green than any island in Greece.

Mount Pantokrator · Nine hundred metres, a narrow road, and Albania behind it
Korission Lagoon · Flamingos on migration, and a juniper forest on the dune
Old Perithia · An abandoned mountain village with footpaths out of it
Myrtiotissa · Steep track down; the monastery is in the trees above
Porto Timoni · Two beaches on an isthmus, twenty minutes down and forty up
Halikounas · Sea on one side, lagoon on the other, and wind on both
Agios Mattheos · The thickest forest on the island is above this village

Things to do in Corfu with kids

The east coast is shallow, sheltered and twenty minutes from town; the west coast has the sand and the sunsets but also the swell. That is the whole decision, and the bus reaches most of the east.

Dassia · Shallow, sheltered, and the bus from town takes twenty minutes
Roda · Flat sand on the north coast and shallow a long way out
Moraitika · Sand, shallow water and everything within walking distance
Agios Georgios Pagon · A long north-west bay with room on it even in August
Canal d’Amour · Sandstone channels to swim through; busy by ten
Pontikonisi · The boat across takes five minutes and children like the story

Holy places in Corfu

Corfu kept what the rest of Greece lost. Because the Ottomans never held it, its churches were never converted and its icons were never burned, and refugees from Crete and the mainland brought theirs here as well. Modest dress; several of the mountain churches are opened by a keyholder in the village.

Saint Spyridon · Open all day; the processions are in spring and in August
Antivouniotissa · A fifteenth-century church kept whole, with the Cretan icons
Paleokastritsa Monastery · Founded in 1225 and still working; modest dress enforced
Pantokrator Monastery · At the summit, founded in 1347, and the masts are beside it
Vatos · A stone village with its church at the centre of it
Gardiki · A Byzantine fort alone in a field; open ground, no gate

Nightlife in Corfu

Corfu has two nights and they do not mix. The town is the Liston and the lanes behind it, slow and late; Ipsos and Kavos are the strip, and Kavos in particular is an industry of its own that you should know about before you book a room near it.

The Liston · Tables under the arcades from eight; the slow version
The old lanes · Bars in the alleys behind the Liston, open late
Garitsa · The bay walk in the evening, and that is the local night
Ipsos · The east-coast strip; loud from midnight
Kavos · One long strip of clubs in the far south; know before booking
Pelekas at sunset · The hill above the west coast; go forty minutes early

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Frequently asked questions about Corfu

What is there to see in Corfu?

The top sights in Corfu are Corfu Town, The Spianada and The Liston. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Corfu?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Corfu without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Corfu?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Corfu, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The town the Ottomans never took.

How do you get to Corfu and get around?

The main ways are Corfu Airport and Corfu Port. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Corfu, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Corfu that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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