Corfu

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Corfu (Kerkyra), a jewel of the Ionian Sea, is one of the greenest and most romantic of the Greek islands. Its Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a gem of Venetian architecture with lively lanes, colourful palazzi and elegant esplanades. The island enjoys the highest rainfall in Greece, giving it lush vegetation: cypresses, olive trees and kumquats cover its hills. Its beaches — Paleokastritsa with its crystal-clear waters and secret coves, Glyfada, the Canal d'Amour — are among the most beautiful in the Ionian Sea.

Venetian, green and not quite Greek

Corfu is the northernmost of the Ionian Islands, 592 km² off the coast of Albania and Epirus, and the greenest in Greece: three million olive trees, cypresses, and a rainfall that the Aegean islands never see. It was never Ottoman. Venice held it for four centuries, from 1386 to 1797, then came the French and the British, who stayed until 1864 — which is why Corfu town has Venetian fortresses, a French arcaded esplanade modelled on the rue de Rivoli, a British cricket ground and a palace, and a café culture closer to Italy than to the Cyclades. The old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The island's symbols are Pontikonisi, the Mouse Island, with its chapel in the bay below Kanoni; the Achilleion, the melancholy palace the Empress Sisi built in 1890; and Paleokastritsa on the west coast, where a monastery stands above a string of coves. The north-east coast — Kalami, where the Durrell family lived in the 1930s, Agni, Kassiopi — is the island's most expensive and most beautiful stretch, facing the Albanian mountains across a narrow strait.

Corfu is also a resort island of long standing: Kavos in the south and Sidari in the north are package-holiday territory, and the west coast has big sandy beaches at Glyfada and Agios Georgios. The two Corfus coexist without much contact.

April to October, Easter above all

Corfu's Orthodox Easter is the most famous in Greece — processions with the island's philharmonic bands, and on Holy Saturday the pots thrown from the balconies of the old town — and the island is green and in flower then. May–June and September–October are the comfortable months at 24–28 °C; July and August are hot, humid by Greek standards and busy. The island is wetter than the Aegean: autumn and winter bring real rain, which is why it looks the way it does.

Close to Italy, easy to reach

Corfu airport is almost in the town, with direct flights from across Europe in season; ferries arrive from Igoumenitsa (1½ hours), Patras, and the Italian ports of Bari, Brindisi, Ancona and Venice. Greece is EU and Schengen — no formality for EU citizens, euro. Corfu town is walkable and the buses are decent, but the island is 60 kilometres long and the good coves of the north-east are down steep lanes — a hire car is the sensible choice, and a small one.

Eat the Venetian-inflected dishes that exist nowhere else in Greece: sofrito (veal in white wine and garlic), pastitsada (pasta with a spiced meat sauce), bourdeto (fish in paprika). Drink the local ginger beer, tsitsibira, a British legacy, and kumquat liqueur, an improbable one. The Liston arcade is for coffee; the old town lanes behind it are for dinner.

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