The Enchanting Old Town of Corfu: A Comprehensive Guide for Tourists

The best collection of Chinese and Japanese art in Greece sits inside a Venetian-era palace on Corfu’s seafront, and almost nobody visiting the Old Town knows it’s there. That’s the kind of layered, mismatched history this town runs on: Byzantine bones, Venetian skin, French arcades, British parade grounds, and, tucked into a former royal residence, eleven thousand pieces of East Asian art donated by a Greek diplomat a century ago.

The Short Version of How It Got This Way

Corfu Town’s Old Town earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 2007, recognized for the way roughly four centuries of Venetian rule, followed by shorter periods of French and British control, left three distinct architectural layers stacked on top of each other without erasing one another. Venetian arches, domes, and narrow alleys form the bones of the place. The British, who administered the island from 1814 to 1864, added the Esplanade and the arcaded promenade known as the Liston, modeled loosely on Parisian streets from the earlier French period rather than anything typically British. The fortification system that wraps the peninsula, built and rebuilt across the Venetian and British periods, is one of the reasons the whole site earned its listing rather than any single monument.

Liston, Spianada, and the Old Fortress

The Liston’s arcades are still where locals and visitors sit for coffee and watch the square, and Spianada across from it claims to be the largest open square in the Balkans, hosting concerts and cricket matches, a sport the British left behind that Corfiots still play regularly on the green. The Old Fortress, a Venetian stronghold built in the 15th century on a natural rock promontory to guard against Ottoman incursions, is open daily, roughly 8am to 8pm in summer and shorter hours in winter, with last entry 20 minutes before closing. The New Fortress, despite Venetian origins, was actually completed under British administration in the 19th century after earlier Venetian and Italian engineering work in the 1570s and 1580s, and offers some of the best panoramic views over the Old Town’s rooftops for a modest entry fee.

Church of Saint Spyridon

This is the most visited religious site in the Old Town, and for good reason: it holds the remains of Saint Spyridon, Corfu’s patron saint, whose relics are paraded through the streets in elaborate processions four times a year, dates tied to historical moments when the saint was credited with saving the island from plague, famine, or siege. The interior is dense with silver votive offerings and blackened by centuries of candle smoke, giving it a different atmosphere than the brighter Orthodox churches elsewhere in Greece.

The Museum Most Visitors Walk Past

Inside the Palace of St. Michael and St. George, built by the British as their residency, sits the Museum of Asian Art, the only museum in Greece dedicated entirely to Asian art and easily the Old Town’s most underrated stop. It began in 1927 from a donation by Gregorios Manos, a Greek ambassador who spent decades buying Chinese, Korean, and Japanese pieces at auction houses in Vienna and Paris. The collection has since grown past eleven thousand objects, including Chinese porcelain dating back roughly three thousand years, Japanese samurai armor, rare woodblock prints, and Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture. It has nothing to do with Corfu’s Jewish history, a common mix-up; that story belongs to a separate site.

Corfu’s Jewish Quarter and Synagogue

The Jewish community here dates back to at least the 12th century and once numbered several thousand people at its peak, split historically between older Romaniote Jews and later arrivals fleeing the Iberian expulsions of the 1490s. Nearly the entire community was deported to Auschwitz by German forces in June 1944; of roughly 1,900 Corfiot Jews, only around 180 survived. The Scuola Greca synagogue on Velissariou Street, built in Venetian style in the 18th century on the site of an older temple, is the sole surviving synagogue in the Old Town and remains open to visitors on a set weekly schedule, generally weekday and Saturday mornings into the early afternoon. It’s a short, sober detour a few streets back from the tourist core, and worth making time for.

Vlacherna and Mouse Island

South of town at Kanoni, the small whitewashed Vlacherna Monastery sits just offshore and, contrary to what older guides claim, is not boat-only: a narrow causeway connects it to the mainland, so you can walk out. From there, a short boat ride reaches Pontikonisi, or Mouse Island, a tiny islet with its own tenth-century chapel. Sunset is the reliable time to catch this view without a crowd of tour buses parked at the overlook above.

Food Worth Seeking Out

Corfiot cuisine carries clear Venetian and British fingerprints alongside standard Greek staples. Sofrito, thin slices of veal simmered in garlic, white wine, and vinegar, and pastitsada, a rich tomato-and-spice stew usually made with beef or rooster and served over thick pasta, are both distinctly local dishes you won’t find elsewhere in Greece in quite this form. Bourdeto, a spicy fish stew built on scorpionfish and heavy on paprika, rounds out the trio most locals point to first. Kumquat liqueur, made from the small citrus the British reportedly introduced to the island, makes a better souvenir than most trinkets on the shelves nearby.

Getting There and Getting Around

Corfu has its own international airport with direct European connections, plus ferry links from Igoumenitsa on the Greek mainland, a short hourly crossing, and from Italian ports including Bari, Brindisi, and Venice for a longer sea journey. A daily ferry also connects to Saranda in Albania, useful if you’re combining islands with a mainland Balkans trip. From either the port or airport, city bus routes reach the Old Town directly, or it’s a walkable 30 minutes from the port if you’d rather stretch your legs after a flight. Note that Corfu’s airport underwent a scheduled renovation closure in January 2026, so if you’re booking off-season travel, double check current airport operating status before finalizing flights.

Within the Old Town itself, cars are largely irrelevant; the streets are narrow, cobbled, and built for foot traffic, with genuinely steep sections near the fortresses. Carry cash for the smaller tavernas and market stalls, since card acceptance is inconsistent away from the main tourist strip, and plan visits to the churches and monasteries with shoulders covered, since dress codes are enforced more strictly than at secular sites.