citinotes
Paradise on earth
“If you ever get bored admiring Corfu’s beauty, not even Paradise will be able to satisfy you” Therese Kracht wrote in her travel notes in 1915. She was spot on. We can rightfully praise all day long Corfu town’s picturesque alleys, the warm colors of its facades and its magnificent esplanade; but, once one heads out to its verdant villages, he realizes that it is a real Eve’s garden awaiting to be explored in the countryside.
It was Corfu’s stunning natural landscape that left the strongest mark on my mind, when I first visited the island at the age of 13. At a time when online booking platforms were not even imagined yet and very few friendly recommendations were in hand, my family decided to hit the road, drive from one village to another, and just pull-over whenever there was a decent house that had a rental sign hanging from its balcony. On the face of it, it was not the most brilliant of ideas, considering that we nearly slept in the car the first night and that we changed accommodation twice in 3 days; nevertheless, this nomadic tactic brought us to discover places that we would have otherwise skipped, and spent hours hiking in magnificent verdant hills, taking in the intense perfumes of the Corfiot land made of pine trees, cypresses and humid soil.
I still remember every place we visited those three days of hotel hunting: Kalami, a serene fishing village and its iconic beach house that once hosted the famous Durrell family; the well-hidden villages of Agni, Nisaki and Agios Stephanos wetting their feet in their crystal waters. I remember an evening, just before sunset, we landed on the shores of Paleokastritsa: I almost had tears running down my cheek when facing that magnificent decor of cypresses bending to “drink water from the sea”, as many writers describe in their travel notes.
I had to swim in those turquoise colors to understand why so many writers turned to fictional heroes and mythical creatures to be able to describe the beauty of the shores. From Paleokastritsa, Michel Déon (1919 – 2016) and Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), two writers with a prolific imagination, travel their readers back-and-forth between myth and reality, between Homer and Shakespeare, Ulysses and Prospero, Heaven and Earth. Déon, a multi-awarded French novelist and member of the Académie Française with an extensive travel record, explains why Corfu is “a paradise on a human scale”: heavenly beautiful, yet full of mortal flaws and misfortunes, Corfu was a gift that Gods gave to Ulysses to forgive his mistakes.
If your travel schedule is short of time, but you still want to get a glimpse of paradise before taking off, then hop on a bus and go to Monrepos royal mansion, just a 15-minute drive from Corfu town. Many writers fell under the spell of the Monrepos royal mansion and its exquisite gardens. The magic begins at the first steps, once you cross the tall, metallic gate. An alley guides you slowly into an enchanting world of birds singing around the enormous cypresses and pine trees; flowers intoxicate your head with their perfume; and ancient ruins make you feel as if you have stepped into a mythological scenery, like the ones depicted in etchings or history books. You continue walking, thinking that, any time now, Nausicaa or Ulysses will pop up around the corner; instead, a lovely mansion appears before your amazed eyes. Make a stop at its neoclassical balcony, set only a few meters above the shore, to enjoy the most idyllic views to the sea and Corfu’s old fortress. I will never forget a summer evening, when a full moon washed the villa with its silver light, in a decor so unbelievably dreamy that I thought violins played in my head. Only Arthur de Claparède (1852 – 1911), cited below, may have shared the same emotions when he visited the villa with its fabulous park, an exuberance of trees, flowers and fresh fruits. A Swiss diplomat and one of the first travelers to circumnavigate the globe in 1876, De Claparède wrote a book entirely dedicated to the history, politics and society of Corfu.
As the day draws to an end, I close my eyes and imagine that I am hovering above the Corfiot horizon: I can see an enormous, soft, thick carpet that folds and unfolds all the shadows of the green. A green that Joseph Reinach (1856 – 1921) so brilliantly compares to Veronese paintings: those luscious green velvets that “Veronese carves the dresses of his Patricians” with. Reinach, a 19th-century French journalist set out to discover Eastern Europe at age 23, was another traveler who fell under the spell of Nausicaa’s island. Do take a moment to read his impressions on Corfiot nature. His descriptions of the perfumed gardens with juicy apricots and intoxicating roses, with clouds of birds and palm trees dancing in the air are simply poetic. Their lyricism captures the essence of this magnificent island; offering the emotion of a strong heartbeat, of butterflies in the tummy, of falling in love at first sight.
Citinotes
chapter 1
Exhilarating nature
This abundant vegetation, the intoxication of spring overlooking the snowy mountains of Epirus, the perfect composition of the seascapes, all this range of senses… everything can take you to the limits of seduction.
In Corfu, everything exudes a grace born by a harmonic blend between Greece and Italy; the campanile of Saint Spyridon and the oval face of the villagers who walk barefoot on the streets; the amphora or the white tin over a woman’s head who walks with the allure of a Goddess; the farmhouses with the big colonnade canopy; the embrace of Garitsa bay; the semi-tropical garden at Monrepos royal mansion; but also the simple cornfields in the plain of Ropa, lined by gray olives trees, in a frame of bucolic hills.
[…] This emerald freshness is a medicine. Levitating high above the rocky Ithaca or the shores of Parga, Corfu looks like a basket of grass tossed over the waves.
Raymon Matton,
Corfou, Institut Français d’Athènes, 1960, in Κωνσταντίνος Τσουμάνης, Η Κέρκυρα μέσα από τα μάτια των περιηγητών, Έψιλον, 2010
This island is too charming. She looks like a woman who knows how pretty she is and, eager to charm, does not stop smiling to emphasize the humid transparency of her eyes, the beautiful pink color of her lips and the two rows of pearls she holds in her mouth. […]
Here you will find rays, perfumes of roses and orange trees, delicious shades; water is everywhere, lively, melodious and exquisite; groves full of chattering birds; the soft, blonde light is an incessant care. From the top of the citadel, the entire island thrives like a big garden of a green color that evokes the magnificent velvets with which Veronese carved the dresses of his patricians; here and there, blue lakes and white villages will appear; the valleys are deep, the hills are light, graceful, clad in fields of green; rocks rarely appear, but when they do, they have a placid and kind allure; one cannot imagine Milton’s Eden or Theocritus’ Tempes to look any differently. But decidedly, this island which was Corckyra and the Pheaecia of Alcinoüs does not belong to Greece. The Gods that we adore in this ever-flowering garden are not our Gods.
You get out of the city by any gate and you immediately find yourself in an ocean of greenery, oaks, young elms, bay trees, enormous lemon trees, bushes of roses adorned with purple flowers, as large as water lilies, forests of pink and white acacias, azaleas, eucalyptus, magnificent bouquets of palm trees. Each farmer has his own vegetable garden, maintained with perfect care […].
We walk in a world of perfumes. The freshness of the lawns reminded me of the English gardens, although the Corfiot ones are united like large pieces of velvet. The edges of the streams are starred with daisies, anemones, bells; clouds of birds twist and turn while they are singing in the middle of forests of reeds.
[…] For me, the greatest charm of Corfu is the blue sea that can be seen from everywhere: not only from all the summits, but from forests, gardens, and countless views through which the shiny tablecloth appears like a polished mirror. In Pantaleone, the eye discovers the Adriatic stretching out like an immense channel between the beautiful mountains of Albania and a pale purple line that is Italy. A rock rises from the middle of the sea looking like a ship in full sail…
Joseph Reinach,
Voyage en Orient, Charpentier, 1879, in Hervé Duchêne, Le voyage en Grèce : Du Moyen-Age au XXème siècle, 2003
chapter 2
Ulysse's refuge
The most famous of wrecks was that of Ulysses. […] After 18 days in the sea, after Calypso’s cave, the straits of Scylla and Charybdis, Sicily of the Cyclopes…at last, before Ulysses’ eyes, an island appeared in front of his eyes, an island dominated only by the happiness of life.
Its mountains stop the clouds and its fields turn green under the rains. The gardens overflow with fruits, the olives drink from the sea. Torrents hurtle down the mountains, while digging their riverbeds inside a thick, red soil. Everywhere, there are natural peaks […] and meadows where sheep graze; vines that descend the steep slopes of the mountains; villages with climbing vine; lonely beaches where dead logs recline their smooth and gray branches and surrender them to the caress of the sea […]. Ulysses discovers everything we still discover three thousand years after him.
Corfu, glistening under the autumn rains, exuded, on that beautiful December morning, a blue breath that hovered over the pine trees. We move between the village ladies, sitting cross-legged to pick olives through the stones. Underneath their white head scarves which are tied around the neck, their faces, with their strong and harmonious features, are slightly tanned. […] This island expressed abundance, a calm happiness whose roots are hooked in a soil that is solid and rich.
I remember Nausicaa’s words about her people, the Phaeacians: the long-sighted, skillful people in the art of weaving cloth and rigging ships, with a poor inclination for matters of war.
The Gods chose Corfu as the place for Ulysses to return to the mortals, as a way to forgive the great hero. They offered a paradise to an exile; it was a paradise on a human scale in which wine, fruits, oil and herbs are cultivated and harvested with effort and intelligence, instead of appearing with a simple wave of a magic wand.
Michel Déon,
Le rendez-vous de Patmos, La Table Ronde, 1971
If you walk in Corfu’s countryside, the colors and scents of autumn will welcome you with their caress to tell you how sweet life is when nature and man shake hands.
chapter 3
The Royal Villa
Opposite the arch, on the other side of the road, the gate of the Monrepos royal villa appears. The splendid exuberance of vegetation of this park makes one think of Alcinous’ famous gardens as described in the Odyssey: “There, says Homer, grew large flourishing trees; some produced pear and pomegranate, others beautiful oranges, sweet figs and green olives. Never have these fruits ceased producing, they lasted all winter long and all summer long; the breath of Zephyr gave birth to some and ripened others; in the place of an aged pear, a new pear has grown; in the place of an aged apple, an old grape or a fig, a new apple, grape and fig. At the far end of the garden there was an orchard that produced abundantly all year round…those were the splendid gifts of the gods in the Alcinous residence”.
[…] Of course, there are, in the world, villas more beautiful and rich […]; But what magnificent vegetation…what a jumble of greenery under the palms and the banana trees… The wisteria bushes are to dream of; fragrant daphne; lovely thornless Banks’ roses; orange, lemon and fig trees, like those of Alcinous. All the plants that a moist soil can produce under a fiery sky grow freely […] in a harmonious mix that rarely disturbs the gardener’s pruner.
The very position of Monrepos, in front of the sea, is idyllic. Through an orchard of olive trees, a path descends gently, under the shade of large trees, to the water’s edge. In the center of the park appears the villa, the casino as they call it – that is to say the little house – the summer residence of King George, built by his predecessor Sir Thomas Maitland.
After having walked along the park of Monrepos for nearly a kilometer, the road that runs halfway up the peninsula crosses meadows shaded by beautiful olive trees. Here and there, vegetable gardens and a few farmhouses with very low ground floors and walls featuring ancient fragments. These huts are partly hidden under the rose bushes, cactus and cypress trees that surround them. Roses abound, there is a real profusion of them. The air is fragrant with their scent.
Corfou et les Corfiotes, H. Kündig, 1900
Corfu for nature lovers
Discover Corfu’s most stunning beaches, exuberant nature and intoxicating gardens.
