KANONI PENINSULA

Even today, Kanoni is still the "postcard" and one of the most famous sights of Corfu. It is hard to resist. The proof is that it is still the most photographed site. About twenty minutes from the port and the old town, this islet, attached to the land by a long dike, shelters a cute little whitewashed church. If the place owes its name to a cannon abandoned by Napoleon's troops, history will remember that this is also where the capital of the island stood during Antiquity. However, with the exception of two excavation sites, archaeologists have never really conducted any research on the spot. The British occupants, on the other hand, turned the small point to the north-east of the peninsula upside down and built the Villa Mon Repos (which can be visited and houses a small museum, please stop by). This residence surrounded by a huge park was the birthplace in 1921 of Prince Philip of Edinburgh, husband of the Queen of England, before being assigned to the Greek royal family, then ceded to the state. It now houses a museum. The park (open from 8am to 7pm, free entrance) allows access to the islets of Vlacherna and Pondikonissi.

The popular tradition associates this island with the boat of the Phaeacians, which after having brought Ulysses back to Ithaca, would have been petrified by Poseidon. Look closely: according to Homer, this small piece of land would be nothing other than the boat that brought Odysseus back to Ithaca with his beloved Penelope... This island seems to have inspired the Swiss painter Boecklin for his work The Island of the Dead. Once there, visit the small church (13th century) surrounded by cypress trees. On the wall, plaques recall the passage of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria and her son Rodolphe.

But it is better to be warned, this landscape must be earned. The only (small) shadow to this idyllic picture: you will probably not be the only one on the spot... So to avoid the tourist buses, inevitable in Corfu in season, we advise you to go there early, very early. The ideal, if you have rented a car, is to go there in the morning at sunrise and to take a little height. You will not regret it. At this precise moment, the spectacle is magnificent, with the first rays of sunlight illuminating the two neighboring islets of Corfu: the Monastery of Vlacherna in the foreground, on the first islet, connected to the port only by a dike, Pondikonissi, the rock on which Odysseus would have failed, and finally the church of Pantokrator on the left.