2 - UNESCO: World Heritage

DESCRIPTION
New Fortress
The town's fortification included a new fortress to complete its fortification works. Constructed by the military
engineer Ferrante Vittelli, who also designed the surrounding walls, it was completed in 1576. It is smaller
than the Old Fortress, and served purely defensive purposes and consists of two basic levels. The lower, which
protected the new port has, on the NE side, a small central (pentagonal) salient and two curtain walls which
connect it to the town's walls and to a small fort (Punta Perpetua) while the higher level, which protected the
side of the countryside has in the west two large salients (Sette venti) and the intermediate wall.
The New Fortress has two entrance portals: the impressive main portal with the Venetian lion facing the port,
and a second portal facing the town.
♦ Urban development of the historic town (Annex, Exhibit 21)
The determining contribution of the fortification works to the town's development may be easily ascertained by
the observation of the residential organisation of areas built prior and following the surrounding wall. The
remains of mass demolitions which were effected so as to carry out the fortification works are marked by a
fragmentary and irregular residential network, with a road network, full of multiple direction selection points
(squares, two-way, three-way streets), with sparse narrow free spaces (small squares – local centres)
highlighting urban planning techniques prior to the surrounding walls.
In areas built following the fortifications, a regular residential network is observed where the successive radial
settlement of linear building units above the road alignment previously defined is worth mentioning. The design,
which was carried out parallel to the fortification by transforming the prior organisation of the borgo (‘Xopoliou’),
was probably implemented following land re-distribution for defence and ideological reasons, with the aim of
promoting the Old Fortress as the power and military control centre of the town.
In both cases, the form of the urban fabric is defined by the linear succession of building units, composing a
residential network which characterises the western late medieval tradition; a form imposed both by local
ownership structures and allotment procedures and by traditional urban area formation processes.
The first form of urban organisation in the area directly outside the Old Fortress (borgo) is considered to have
been established around the oldest churches that functioned as poles of attraction for the stabilization of the
residents, thereby establishing the foundations for a first mode of organizing space in a way that in its inception
was independent from the other construction cores. In that way, the oldest neighbourhoods (contrade) of
Xopoliou were formed.
It should be pointed out that the wall surrounded 24 neighbourhoods, which took their names from that of their
church (e.g. Contrada S. Salvator, Antivuniotissa, Chieropula). One of the “preferred” areas of the initial
settlements was Campielo, which had many churches and constituted the nearest area that was "easy" to
defend, near the initial entrance of the medieval town. The gradual density of the first urban structure gave rise,
along the basic connection routes of initially independent neighbourhoods, to the typical transitional
construction ‘a borgo’. Buildings, in this case, were erected in a repetitive way, in a continuous system over
junction ‘axes’, creating a kind of ‘wall’, which separated the route from the remaining semi-rural area.
The Old Town of Corfu Nomination for inclusion on the World Heritage List 36
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