About Corfu
Corfu Banquet
Corfu Banquet celebrates the tastes, smells and colours of an island where the cooking is seasonal and the flowers play changes on the theme of a year-round spring.
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Corfu (ancient and modern Greek Κέρκυρα, Krkyra, Latin Corcyra; see also List of traditional Greek place names) is an island of Greece, in the Ionian Sea. It lies off the coast of Albania, from which it is separated by a strait varying in breadth from less than 2 to about 15 miles (3 to 25 km) including one near Albania near Butrint and a longer one west of Thesprotia. The island is part of the Corfu Prefecture. The principal town of the island is also named Corfu, or Kerkyra in Greek.
Corfu has ferry services to the rest of Greece with Igoumenitsa and Gaios in the island of Paxoi and as far as Patras. There is also a small port in Lefkimmi. The coastline and its beaches is about 217 km which includes capes and points. The highest point is Pantokrator, the second is Stravoskiadi (849 m).
It is linked by two highways, GR-24 in the west and GR-25 in the south. The airport is located some kilometres to the south. The runway is next to the ocean. This makes it harder for pilots to land their planes. The airport offers flights with Olympic Airlines (OA 600, 602 and 606) and Aegean Airlines (A3 402, 404 and 406). Corfu now also has a university named Ionian University. The city is covered with hills while the west is covered with hills. Capes and points include Agia Aikaterini, and Draptis to the north, Lefkimmi and Asprokavos to the southeast and Megachoro to the south. Another island is in the middle of Gouvia Bay which covers the eastern part of the island; it is called Ptychia. Campgrounds can be found in Palaiokastritsa, Agrillos, two in the northern part, Pyrgi, Gouvia and Messonghi.
Geography
The name Corfu is an Italian corruption of the Byzantine Κορυφώ (Koryphō), which is derived from the Greek Κορυφαί (Koryphai), meaning "Crests." In shape it is not unlike the sickle (drepanē), to which it was compared by the ancients, the hollow side, with the town and harbour of Corfu in the centre, being turned towards the Albanian coast. Its extreme length is about 40 miles (60 km). and its greatest breadth about 20 miles (30 km). The area is estimated at 227 sq. miles (580 km). Two high and well-defined ranges divide the island into three districts, of which the northern is mountainous, the central undulating and the southern low-lying. The most important of the two ranges is that of San Salvador, probably the ancient Istone, which stretches east and west from Cape St. Angelo to Cape St. Stefano, and attains its greatest elevation of 3300 ft (1000 m) in the summit from which it takes its name. The second culminates in the mountain of Santi Jeca, or Santa Decca, as it is called by misinterpretation of the Greek designation Άγιοι Δέκα (Hagioi Deka), or the Ten Saints. The whole island, composed as it is of various limestone formations, presents great diversity of surface, and the prospects from the more elevated spots are magnificent. Beautiful and sparkling beaches with yellow sands are founded in Agii Gordi, the Korissi lagoon, Agios Georgios, Marathia, Kassiopi, Sidari, Roda, Palaiokastritsa and many others.
Corfu is generally considered to be one of the most beautiful Greek isles, but the prevalence of the olive gives some monotony to its colouring. It is worthy of remark that Homer names, as adorning the garden of Alcinous, seven plants only – wild olive, oil olive, pear, pomegranate, apple, fig and vine. Of these the apple and the pear are now very inferior in Corfu; the others thrive well and are accompanied by all the fruit trees known in southern Europe, with addition of the kumquat, loquat and prickly pear and, in some spots, the banana. When undisturbed by cultivation, the myrtle, arbutus, bay and ilex form a rich brushwood and the minor flora of the island is extensive.
The town of Corfu stands on the broad part of a peninsula, whose termination in the citadel is cut from it by an artificial fosse formed in a natural gully, with a salt-water ditch at the bottom. Having grown up within fortifications, where every foot of ground was precious, it is mostly, in spite of recent improvements, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous, up-and-down streets, accommodating themselves to the irregularities of the ground, few of them fit for wheel carriages. There is, however, a handsome esplanade between the town and the citadel, and a promenade by the seashore towards Castrades. In several parts of the town may be found houses of the Venetian time, with some traces of past splendour, but they are few, and are giving place to structures in the modern and more convenient French style. The town is as mundane as Rome, looks like Venice and has the flair of Havana (Cuba). Of the thirty-seven Greek churches the most important are the city's cathedral, the church dedicated to Our Lady of the Cave (ἡ Παναγία Σπηλιώτισσα (hē Panagia Spēliōtissa)); Saint Spyridon church, where inside lies the preserved body of the patron saint of the island; and the suburban church of St Jason and St Sosipater, reputed the oldest in the island, named after the two saints who were probably the first to preach Christianity to the Corfiots. The nearby island named Pontikonisi (Greek meaning "mouse island") has only three trees, and the highest point is about 2 m.
Othoni (Οθωνοί) is the westernmost settlement and island in all of Greece. Erikoussa is the northernmost of the Ionian Islands. All areas lie below the 40 N. About a quarter of the villages names end with -ades, while there are some villages outside Corfu whose names also end in -ades, especially in the prefecture of Ioannina on mainland Greece exactly opposite the island of Corfu. The villages at the southern part and on the Paxoi islands have names ending with -atika as well as -eika, notably Gramateika.