Corfu Complete: LGBTQ Pink Palace, Venetian Boutique Hotels, Music Festival in the Old Fortress, Paleokastritsa Monastery, Gouvia Marina Sailing Base, and the Island That Changes Its Visitors
The complete Corfu guide closes with the LGBTQ Pink Palace beach resort, the Venetian palazzo boutique hotel experience, the international Music Festival in the Old Fortress, the Paleokastritsa cliff monastery whale bone museum, the Gouvia Marina Ionian sailing hub, and the reflection that Corfu changes its visitors more than any other Greek island.
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Corfu LGBTQ and Progressive Tourism
Corfu has established itself as the most LGBTQ-friendly of the Ionian islands, with the Pink Palace beach resort in Agios Gordios, the oldest and most established LGBTQ-oriented beach resort in the Ionian Islands, and the generally accepting atmosphere of the cosmopolitan Corfu Old Town that reflects the island's long history of multinational cultural contact. The Pink Palace has operated for more than 30 years as the most well-known Greek island accommodation in the international backpacker market.
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Corfu Heritage Accommodation: The Venetian Town Stays
The accommodation within the Corfu Old Town UNESCO walls, in the renovated Venetian palazzos converted to boutique hotels and apartment rentals, provides the most historically atmospheric island accommodation in Greece outside the Santorini cave houses, with the stone staircases, the arched ceilings, the views from the windows over the medieval lanes, and the proximity to the Liston morning coffee creating the most complete historic urban hotel experience in the Ionian chain.
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Corfu Music Festival: The International Season
The Corfu Music Festival, the most ambitious classical music event in the Ionian Islands held in the Old Fortress and the Corfu Town concert venues in September, presents international orchestras, soloists, and chamber music ensembles in the setting of the medieval fortifications that make the Corfu Old Fortress the most dramatically beautiful outdoor concert venue in Greece. The festival reflects the tradition of the Ionian Academy, established in 1824 as the first university in Greece, which taught music as a central academic discipline.
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Paleokastritsa Monastery: The Cliff-Top Tradition
The Theotokos Monastery at Paleokastritsa, perched on the cliff above the most beautiful Corfu bay with the gardens and the icon-painted cells visible from the boats below, has been a monastic community on the site since at least 1225 and provides the spiritual dimension of the Paleokastritsa experience that complements the natural beauty of the bays. The monastery museum displays the icon collection, the vestments, and the natural curiosities including the whale bones that arrived on the beach below.
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Corfu for Sailing: The Gouvia Marina Base
The Gouvia Marina, 6 kilometers from Corfu Town, is the largest marina in Greece with 1,200 berths and the most complete marine services infrastructure in the Ionian chain, serving as the primary base for the charter sailboat circuit through the Ionian Islands from Corfu south to Zakynthos. The Ionian sailing season from April to October, with the reliable afternoon breeze on the Corfu channel and the protected anchorages of the island chain, attracts the largest concentration of international charter yacht traffic in Greece after the Saronic Gulf.
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Corfu Closing: The Island That Changes Its Visitors
Corfu changes its visitors more than any other Greek island for the combination of the natural beauty, the historical depth, the culinary sophistication, and the literary associations that accumulate in the memory as the visit extends. The visitor who stays in Corfu beyond the package holiday week, who walks the Durrell trails through the olive groves, who crosses to Paxos and returns through the channel at sunset, and who sits in the Liston for the last morning coffee before the airport taxi, leaves with the conviction that Corfu is the fullest expression of the Mediterranean world available in a single island.