Kassiopi

Kassiopi is a fishing village on Corfu's northeast coast, recorded with a community population of 1,147 in the 2021 census, though its year-round population is closer to a thousand. It belongs to the Kassopaia municipal unit within the modern municipality of North Corfu, and it sits where the island comes close to the mainland opposite, looking straight out over the Corfu Channel.

From Pyrrhus to the Romans

Kassiopi is thought to have been founded in the 3rd century BC during the reign of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, and it grew into what ancient sources treat as the only town of any size on the island apart from Corcyra itself. Its position on the channel made it a natural place for ships to wait out bad weather on the crossing between Italy and Greece, and Cicero describes breaking a journey in its harbour. The town flourished under Roman rule, and according to Suetonius the Emperor Nero sang at the altar of its temple, a detail that has kept Kassiopi in the written record long after the temple itself disappeared.

The Temple of Zeus Kassios and Panagia Kassopitra

That temple was dedicated to Zeus Kassios, and sometime in the 5th century the site was converted into a Christian church honouring the Virgin under the name Panayia Kassopitra. The building was burned by the Ottomans in 1537 and rebuilt between 1590 and 1591, and it has been a place of pilgrimage ever since, the Virgin of Kassiopi being regarded as the protector of sailors making the passage through the straits. Its best-known story is the miracle of 1530, when a boy named Stefanos, blinded on Venetian orders after being wrongly accused of theft, is said to have recovered his sight overnight while sheltering in the church with his mother. The event is still commemorated on 8 May.

The Ruins of Kassiopi Castle

The hill above the harbour still carries the ruins of Kassiopi Castle. Its origins are Byzantine: excavation has produced early Byzantine pottery of the fourth to seventh centuries and bronze coins of the emperors Maurice and Basil II, pointing to a fortress on the spot by about the 6th century AD. Bohemund of Taranto took it in 1081 during the first Norman invasion of Greece, and Alexios I Komnenos recovered it in 1084 after beating the Norman fleet in three battles fought in the Corfu Channel. The Angevins held it from 1267, and in 1386 it fell to Venice after its defenders resisted the takeover of the island. Venice then deliberately dismantled the place rather than risk it being held against them, and between 1537 and 1558 the architects Michele Sanmicheli and his son Giangerolamo carried its stone away to repair the Old Fortress at Corfu Town. What survives is still substantial in outline: a roughly quadrilateral circuit a little over one kilometre around, with nineteen towers alternating circular and rectangular, enclosing some 35,000 square metres. The site belongs to the Greek Ministry of Culture and is open to visitors.

The Harbour and Its Beaches

Below the castle the harbour is still a working one, ringed by tavernas, shops and cafes, with fishing boats and visiting yachts sharing the same quay. Two beaches sit immediately either side of the headland: Bataria, a pebble cove directly beneath the castle with a view across to the Albanian mountains, and Avlaki, a wider and quieter bay on the eastern side with a couple of tavernas behind it. Its sheltered harbour and central position on the island's north coast mean many gulet cruises from Corfu call in here, using Kassiopi as a stop between the busier anchorages further south and the quieter coastline toward Corfu's northern tip. The season runs from May to October, and the village is at its best in June or September, when the tavernas are open but the quay is not crowded.