Corfu's Old Town and its two fortresses: how the visits differ

The short answer

Corfu's World Heritage property is not one monument. The Ministry of Culture's Castle Route says the Old Town of Corfu, its two fortresses and its perimeter fortifications were inscribed together on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2007,[1] and the Ministry's Odysseus page names the same parts.[3] So the old town's streets and churches, the Old Fortress and the New Fortress are all components of the property. XTOUR could not read UNESCO's own property page.

For a visitor the two fortresses are different outings. The Old Fortress fills the peninsula on the eastern side of the town, cut off by a sea moat and entered over a bridge.[7][1] The New Fortress crowns Agios Markos hill at the north-western end of the town.[2] Each has its own ticket from Hellenic Heritage's official ticket store, both with timed entry,[10][9] and the Ministry says the combined ticket that once covered the Old Fortress and several Corfu museums is no longer available.[4]

The Old Fortress

The Ministry's Odysseus page traces the fortress to the middle of the 6th century AD, when the people of the ancient city on the Kanoni peninsula moved to this peninsula with two peaks, where the Byzantine city of Koryfo grew up and gave the island its name. Byzantines and Angevins walled it, but its present form is mostly Venetian, from 1386 to 1797, beginning with the sea moat that turned the peninsula into an island. After the Ottoman siege of 1537, the Ministry says, Michele and Gian Gerolamo Sanmicheli gave it the bastioned west front, with two pentagonal bastions and the main gate between them.[3]

The Castle Route measures the fortress at 600 m long and 200 m wide and names the two bastions Savorgnan and Martinengo; a 60-metre steel bridge now crosses to the gate where a movable wooden one once stood. It says this system, together with the New Fortress and the town walls, kept Corfu the only Ionian island that did not fall to the Ottomans, despite attempts in 1430, 1537, 1571, 1573 and 1716.[1] Hellenic Heritage speaks of the fortress withstanding three Ottoman sieges, and adds that the worst destruction came from inside: an explosion in the Old Castle's powder magazine in 1718 that destroyed most of the buildings.[7] Bombing in the Second World War destroyed the Venetian palace of the Proveditore and the Pasqualigo barracks.[3]

What is inside today

Hellenic Heritage lists British barracks and Venetian prisons, the Latin chapel of Our Lady of the Carmelites, and the church of Saint George, which became Orthodox after the British left and received an altarpiece from the church of Saint Spyridon in the town.[7] The buildings are not only monuments. Hellenic Heritage says the old British officers' barracks house the Ionian University's Music Studies Department and that other buildings hold the Historical Archive of Corfu, the Public Library and the Corfu Byzantine Collection;[7] the Castle Route says the British infantry barracks house the General State Archives of Corfu and the Central Public Historical Library.[1]

The two official pages date the main buildings differently:

• Saint George. Hellenic Heritage says it was built "in Georgian style in 1840";[7] the Castle Route dates it to 1849 and describes a neoclassical building in the form of a Doric temple.[1]
• The Carmelite chapel. Hellenic Heritage says it was erected at the beginning of the 17th century;[7] the Castle Route says Carmelite monks built it between 1636 and 1671.[1]

XTOUR does not choose between these dates.

Entry, as the operators describe it

Hellenic Heritage's ticket store calls itself the official store for the Old Fortress and says timed entry is required. A ticket is valid for one entry at the date and time chosen, can be changed up to two hours ahead and at most twice, and cannot be refunded; large luggage, food and professional photography or filming are not allowed.[9] The Ministry's page adds that people under 18 may not enter unless accompanied by adults, and that there is a shop at the entrance.[4]

The New Fortress

The New Fortress was built by the Venetians on Agios Markos hill to protect the suburbs that had grown outside the Old Fortress, a project given to the engineer Ferrante Vitelli, and the Castle Route says every building on the hill was demolished to make room for it.[2] The official pages do not agree on when it was built:

• the Ministry's Odysseus page gives 1576 to 1578;[5]
• the Castle Route's New Fortress page gives 1576 to 1588,[2] while the Castle Route's Old Fortress page gives both "between 1576 and 1588" and, in its list of Venetian phases, 1571 to 1576;[1]
• Hellenic Heritage says work began around 1576 and was not completed before 1645.[8]

XTOUR's reading is that the fortress was begun around 1576, which all three accept, and that its completion date is disputed.

Its test came in 1716. The Castle Route says 3,000 defenders under Field Marshal Johann Matthias von Schulenburg drove off a force of about 33,000 Ottomans,[2] and Hellenic Heritage notes the statue of Schulenburg by Antonio Corradini on the Spianada, passed on the way into the Old Fortress.[7]

What the visit covers

The Ministry's description sets out the route: the visit begins at the eastern front of the southern Seven Winds bastion, continues through a gallery to the demibastion of Tenedos, and climbs a ramp to the upper level and the large British barracks.[5] The Castle Route says entry today is through a gate north of the Sarantaris bastion, and that the eastern part of the fortress is closed to the public because it houses Corfu Naval Base.[2] The Ministry's description identifies a second British barracks on the lower level as the Naval Station of Corfu.[5]

The fortress is seasonal. Hellenic Heritage's page lists it as closed from 1 November to 31 March,[8] and the Ministry's information page lists it as closed from 1 November 2025 to 31 March 2026. The two pages do not give the same summer timetable: the Ministry's excludes Tuesdays,[6] and Hellenic Heritage's does not.[8] XTOUR does not publish either and does not know which is current. Hellenic Heritage sells the New Fortress as a separate timed-entry ticket,[10] and the Ministry's page sets the same rule for under-18s as at the Old Fortress.[6]

How the two fortresses compare

XTOUR's reading of the difference: the Old Fortress is the older complex and a working part of the town's institutional life, while the New Fortress is a single Venetian and British military work with a defined visitor route, part of it still military, and a shorter season.

The town between them

Visit Greece describes the Old Town, the UNESCO site, as palaces, stone-paved alleys, squares and churches.[15] The space between the old town and the Old Fortress has its own history. The Ministry's Odysseus page says the Venetians kept an unbuilt zone there, the spianata, today the Spianada.[3] The Castle Route says creating that open firing range meant demolishing about 2,000 buildings,[1] and Hellenic Heritage uses the same round figure, "some 2,000 houses and churches", for what Vitelli demolished for building material for the New Fortress.[8] The two pages attach the figure to different works, and XTOUR does not know whether they describe one demolition or two.

The church of Saint Spyridon in the old town keeps the relic of the island's patron saint. The Holy Metropolis of Corfu says the single-nave church was built around 1589-1594 by the Voulgaris family, to whom the relic, brought from Constantinople in 1489, had passed as a dowry, and that the relic of Saint Theodora the Augusta is kept there too. The Metropolis ties the relic's processions to the island's history: Holy Saturday for the famine of 1553, Palm Sunday and the first Sunday of November for the plagues of 1630 and 1673, and 11 August for the siege of 1716, the same siege the New Fortress withstood. It gives the feast as 12 December and says the official processions are held five times a year.[11] Saint Spyridon is a working church; XTOUR has not read visiting rules from it and does not supply any.

The Achilleion is not in the town

The Achilleion is a separate visit outside the old town and its fortresses: its official website gives its address as Gastouri, Corfu.[13] Its history page says Empress Elisabeth of Austria built the palace there, completed in 1891, and that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany bought it in 1907.[14] XTOUR treats Corfu Town as a base for it, not its container. When read on 9 October 2026, its home page said that, because of restoration works, only the outdoor areas and the Imperial Gardens were open to visitors.[12]

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not publish opening hours, prices or travel times for either fortress or the Achilleion; Hellenic Heritage and the Achilleion's website publish their own. It does not know which of the New Fortress's two published summer timetables is current, how much of the New Fortress beyond the described route is open, or where the visitor entrances are as points on a map. For how Corfu sits among Greece's other bases, see the Greece travel guide to mainland and island bases; for the reasons a Greek site's opening changes, see what Greek archaeological site opening depends on.