|
The official decision of unification of Corfu with Greece (1864)
The name Corfu is an Italian corruption of the Greek coryphai ("crests"). According to legend, the island was Scheria or Drepani, home of the Phaeacians - Alkinoos's people - in the Homeric epic of Ylysseus. A Corinthian colony established about 734 BC supplanted a settlement of Eretrians from Euboea. Proudly independent and even hostile to its mother city of Corinth, the new colony was reduced (c. 600 BC) by the Corinthian tyrant Periander, but later it regained independence and devoted itself to commerce. Corfu took no active part in the Persian invasion (480 BC) of Greece, but in 435 it sought the assistance of Athens in a quarrel with Corinth, a request that became a primary cause of the Peloponnesian War. Corfu quit the war in 410, but a new alliance with Athens (375) resulted in hostilities with Sparta.
After 303, the island changed hands several times for a quarter century. Seized in 229 BC by the Illyrians, it was delivered by the Romans, who retained it as a naval station and made it a free state. In 31 BC Octavian (later the emperor Augustus) used it as a base against Mark Antony, but his foundation of Nicopolis Actia on the site of his victory caused Corfu to lose a great deal of its prestige.
The island's favourable position between Greece and Italy attracted powers from east and west. In succession it fell to Goths, Lombards, Saracens, and Normans and was fought over by the kings of Sicily and the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice. In 1204 the island was annexed to the Greek despotate of Epirus but passed back to King Manfred of Sicily (1259) and then (1267) to the Angevins of Naples. Venetian sovereignty was restored in 1401. Upon the dismemberment of the Venetian republic (1797), Corfu was assigned to France; but the French garrison was soon expelled by a Russo-Turkish fleet. Incorporated into the Napoleonic empire (1807), it became a British protectorate after the emperor's final defeat (1815). British administration displeased the inhabitants, however, and in 1864 Corfu was ceded, with the other Ionian Islands, to Greece. Significantly, Corfu was never occupied by the Turks.
|
 Home
Regional information
History
How to get there
Town of Kerkyra
Places to visit
Food specialities
|
| |
|
 |
|
