2 - UNESCO: World Heritage

DESCRIPTION
the Church of Agios Nikolaos Geronton where mass was said in Serbian. Serbs also published their own
newspaper in Serbian on Corfu on a special printing press brought there from the French occupation authority
buildings.
In 1923 the Italian army claimed the island after a short seizure and in 1940-1943 it suffered bombardments,
during which the theatre and a library of great significance were destroyed.
2b iii. B r i e f H i s t o r y
Corfu is presented in its history as a staging post between the main body of the Greek world and the cultures
that developed beyond the Adriatic Sea on the Italian peninsula and the cultures that developed in Illyria and its
hinterland. The function of the city as a staging post becomes obvious if we analyze the different ways in which
it facilitated transactions and movements of people and goods between cultures that were never sealed off
from their surroundings. It is also seen by the strategic role it played, since any political power based on the
island could exert control over the passage at which it is located. This function as a staging post allowed
peoples who passed through the island to be welcomed, peoples such as the Illyrians, Greeks and Italians.
The city’s position and activities attributed to it the character of a settlement with minimal farming, but one
involved in trade, a city of services that abandoned its hinterland and focused on its shore. Only when the
Mediterranean was ‘closed off’ for a time and controlled by the Arabs to the detriment of the Byzantine state did
the town of Corfu, like so many other areas in the state, turn to its hinterland. Thus the town managed to
ensure adequate food supplies and a somewhat safe investment of its wealth. At this time the Corfiot villages
developed production mechanisms that became a factor in the history of the island, acquiring for it in one way
or another a role equally as important as that of the town, an importance that has survived to this very day.
The geography of Corfu, although related in geological terms to that of the nearby coast of the mainland, is not
marked by prohibitive mountainous massifs or by a harsh climate. Forested, yet not inaccessible, it was ideal
for settlement without its geomorphology allowing for the formation of closed, isolated residential complexes
which would have permitted segregation between mountain and plain, or the development of separate cultural
units (for example, gorges are completely absent from the island). The island is surrounded by beaches easily
accessible from the sea and which all lead via relatively accessible paths to the interior of the island and its
most mountainous regions after only a few hours walking. The sea was always the island’s focus since there
are finds dating back to 6000 BC from a coastal area facing west, while there are also finds from 2000 BC.
These are indications of settlements focused on the sea and facing west. The mountainous interior was not in
the slightest bit attractive for the island’s early residents.
The Old Town of Corfu Nomination for inclusion on the World Heritage List 28
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