Ianthe

Corfu, Ianthe Corfu, Ionian Islands 49084 Greece

‘Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu the blue really begins…you are aware of a change in the heart of things: aware of the horizon beginning to stain at the rim of the world: aware of islands coming out of the darkness to meet you’.

So begins Lawrence Durrell’s 1945 ode to Corfu, Prospero’s Cell. Even today, visitors to the island often arrive by sea, approaching from Italy in the west, of the Greek mainland in the east.

Emerging in the early morning sunshine, the pastel-hued houses above Corfu Town’s old port are a jumble of slim tiers with narrow passages running between them, made brilliant with washing hung out to dry from every balcony like festive bunting. The tall Venetian mansions display ancient coats of coloured paint, blurred by successive winters and giving visitors to the town the feeling of stepping into a watercolour painting.

Corfu has rightfully earner the title of the music capital of Greece because of its hundreds of music associations and dozens of orchestras, bands, opera music events a tradition dating back to 400 years of Venetian rule of the island.

The town is centred on a wide tree-lined esplanade called the Spianada, whose French arcades echo the Rue de Rivoli. A drop of Britishness is to be found on the noble sweep of this square, which is transformed into a cricket pitch throughout the summer – the world’s only working sports field within a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Meanwhile, the Corfiot countryside boasts elegiac greenery, unrivalled across Greece and contrasting remarkably with the solemn barrenness of the Aegean. Bathed in brilliant white sunlight throughout the summer months, the winter rains ensure a sublime frondescence across the island, with the inland valleys thickly carpeted with wildflowers, studded with gnarled olive trees and dense groves of stiffly swaying cypresses.