2 - UNESCO: World Heritage

DESCRIPTION
In return for the security they provided, the Venetians demanded strict obeisance from the inhabitants.
Nevertheless, the Republic exhibited understanding and tolerance towards the Orthodox Church, mainly
because of its tendency to become independent from the Pope. The financial returns from Corfu came primarily
from taxation, the control of transit trade, the tenure of public land, the salt monopoly and to a great extent from
the cultivation of olive trees, which was generously subsidised.
This four century period was not a peaceful one for Corfu. One attack in 1403 by the Genoans, who forever
kept their eye on the island, followed by a second one in 1431, caused the villages to be deserted. The part of
the town outside the Fortress was burnt down, but the fort managed to keep the enemy out. The successive
Ottoman efforts to conquer the town in 1431, 1537, 1571, 1573, 1716, although unsuccessful, had devastating
consequences for the town’s inhabitants living outside the Fortress, as well as for all the villages, which were
burnt down while thousands of people were slaughtered or taken prisoners. To deal with the dramatic
population decrease which resulted from the raids, which grew even worse after two awful plague outbreaks
(1629 and 1673), the Venetians brought in settlers from other parts of Greece, Constantinople, Epirus, Nauplia
(Navplio) and Crete.
In addition, serious internal conflicts shook Corfu in the 17 th century, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives,
as well as in the financial and defensive weakening of the island. A first sign of turbulence in 1610 followed the
first ever refusal of the farmers to deliver their share of the crop to the Venetians, escalated into a real
revolution in 1640, rekindled in 1642 and 1652, which was crushed by additional armed forces called in from
Venice.
The French Republican Period (1797-1799)
The doctrines of the French Revolution reached Corfu soon and infected it with a passionate wish for national
independence and establishment of a Greek Republic in the Ionian Islands. The inhabitants welcomed the
French Fleet to the island as a liberation from the Venetian yoke. But this atmosphere of euphoria was soon to
disappear since the appointed administration consisted once more of nobles, and the financial exploitation was
this time even more cruel than before.
After the Treaty of Campo Formio, by which the Ionian Islands became a French colony, on account of
confiscations and cruel acts on the part of the French soldiers who were left unpaid and had started to loot
churches, the people considered French rule worse than Venetian and turned against it.
Russian-Turkish Rule and the Septinsular Republic (1799-1807)
The climate of discontent among the inhabitants and the propaganda of the Russian-Turkish alliance against
the "French atheists" forced the latter to a cease-fire with the Russian fleet, after four months of resistance and
continuing conflicts. The Ionian Islands were given over to the Admirals of the two allied fleets.
On 24 th April 1799, the two admirals declared the establishment of the "State of the Ionian Islands", with Corfu
as its capital. The Constantinople Convention (May 21 st , 1800), signed by Russia, Turkey and Great Britain,
declared the Ionian Islands an autonomous unified state, under tribute to Turkey.
The Old Town of Corfu Nomination for inclusion on the World Heritage List 26
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