FORT D'ALI PACHA

Located on an islet at the mouth of the Vivari canal, this fort (Kalaja e Ali Pashës) owes its name to the governor Ali Pacha de Tepelena (1740-1822), who resided here regularly from 1804. It is in fact a Venetian structure, as is the triangular fort located upstream from the canal. Built between the late ^15th and early ^16th centuries, it was part of the defensive system set up around Corfu. The island and its surroundings, including Butrint, were owned by the Republic of Venice from 1386 to 1797. Constantly modified and now partly in ruins, the fort is a 35 x 25 m rectangle. It has four towers at each corner: two semicircular towers facing Corfu, and two square towers facing the Vivari canal. Captured several times by the Ottomans, it remained in Venetian hands until the Republic was subdued by Bonaparte in 1794. Butrint and the Greek islands of the Ionian Sea then became part of the French departments of Greece, a short-lived entity which disappeared during the Russo-Ottoman campaign of 1799. But before leaving, the French soldiers dismantled the city walls. Ali Pasha seized the fort in 1804 and had it rebuilt as part of a vast network of fortresses in Greece and Albania, which was to ensure his autonomy from Ottoman rule. This did not prevent the bloodthirsty Albanian governor from being executed by the sultan's soldiers in 1822 on the island of Lake Ioannina in Greece.