Sitting in the most northwesterly corner of Greece, Corfu is an elegant and cosmopolitan island, wearing the mantle of its colourful Venetian history with style.
‘Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu the blue really begins...you are aware of a change in the heart of things: aware of the horizon beginning to stain at the rim of the world: aware of islands coming out of the darkness to meet you’.
So begins Lawrence Durrell’s 1945 ode to Corfu, Prospero’s Cell. Even today, visitors to the island often arrive by sea, approaching from Italy in the west, of the Greek mainland in the east.
Emerging in the early morning sunshine, the pastel-hued houses above Corfu Town’s old port are a jumble of slim tiers with narrow passages running between them, made brilliant with washing hung out to dry from every balcony like festive bunting. The tall Venetian mansions display ancient coats of coloured paint, blurred by successive winters and giving visitors to the town the feeling of stepping into a watercolour painting.
Corfu has rightfully earner the title of the music capital of Greece because of its hundreds of music associations and dozens of orchestras, bands, opera music events a tradition dating back to 400 years of Venetian rule of the island.
The town is centred on a wide tree-lined esplanade called the Spianada, whose French arcades echo the Rue de Rivoli. A drop of Britishness is to be found on the noble sweep of this square, which is transformed into a cricket pitch throughout the summer - the world’s only working sports field within a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Meanwhile, the Corfiot countryside boasts elegiac greenery, unrivalled across Greece and contrasting remarkably with the solemn barrenness of the Aegean. Bathed in brilliant white sunlight throughout the summer months, the winter rains ensure a sublime frondescence across the island, with the inland valleys thickly carpeted with wildflowers, studded with gnarled olive trees and dense groves of stiffly swaying cypresses.
The sophisticated north-east is known as Kensington-on- Sea and is the site of the finest real estate in Greece with its epicentre the Rothschild family’s imposing summer villa.
It is here that the luxury villa lifestyle comes into its own, with the hillsides sprinkled with secluded, high-end properties boasting private infinity pools and awe-inspiring sea views, with the snowcapped Albanian-Epirote mountains rising mysteriously in the east.
Seafront villas for sale in Corfu are considered the pinnacle of the luxury real estate in Greece. As a matter of fact, Corfu real estate is the oldest and most established luxury property market in Greece, remarkably popular for the savvy international sophisticated buyers who are looking for both a heritage and a lifestyle real estate investment in the Mediterranean at a fraction of the acquisition cost of other popular destinations in the Southern Europe. Those rare seafront jewels are priced on average at €12,000 euro per sq.m. offer to property collectors significant quality to their real estate portfolio and a solid long term investment. These properties are mainly located on the northern east coast of the island, on a stretch of lush greenery and turquoise waters called Kensington by the sea. Equally appealing, Corfiot inland offers fine examples of old times aristocracy mansions starting at €6,000 euro per sq.m. while apartments in the city are a popular solution for an entry level investment at world of luxury real estate.
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