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| The Rise and Fall of Corfu's Mansions |
We climbed one hairpin bend after another on our way up the mountain. Through the olive groves, the sea appeared in a more vertiginous perspective at every turn. Then, at a little hamlet, we set off on foot along a stone-cobbled path winding through olive trees. Nets were laid out on the ground to catch the fallen fruit - but it was June now, long after the harvest was over, and their presence was evidence that the proprietors no longer took care of their groves.
Through the encroaching brambles, we glimpsed a strawberry-tinted wall while, high above, a green shutter rattled in the breeze. Here, in the slopes above Nissaki, we had come across one of Corfu’s abandoned mansions. In a region where property on the coast is snapped up, hidden houses in the hills are left to moulder towards decay, for the landed families can no longer maintain the lifestyle of past generations.
Mansions like this one were a product of the Venetian era, remnant of a medieval feudal system that had its origins with the Angevin lords, who ruled the island in the 13th century. When Corfu was added to the great dominions of Charles of Anjou in 1267, the island was divided into four bailiwicks (which are still evident in the traditional regional divisions of Oros, Girou, Messis and Lefkimmi) and twenty four fiefs, held either as royal demense or by barons on behalf of the crown. This was the pattern upon which the Venetian nobility’s estates developed.
With the Ottoman Empire slashing its way across the Balkans, people sought safer havens. Corfu, never taken by the Turks, offered security. So families came from many locations, and those with wealth and initiative became the nobles of Corfu. Of the great clans, ‘the Marmoras, Theotokis and Prosalendis were of Byzantine extraction, the Capodistrias and Giallinas from Dalmatia, the Voulgaris from Epirus,the Sordinas from the Veneto, while the Pieri were French... the Kourkoumelis and the Flamburiaris (moved) from Cephalonia to Corfu.’ (Britain’s Greek Empire - Michael Pratt).
It was this period which saw the construction of the great country houses, ‘residences intended originally and principally as a base from which to oversee the gathering of agricultural produce and to supervise the labourers which toiled in the service of the great landowners. These buildings, manor houses in essence, were used as temporary residences at harvest time and are characterized by their extensive storage capacity and generous provision of various outhouses.’ (Noble houses of Corfu - Despina Paisidou)
At the same time, the great families mainly resided in a grand house in Corfu Town. Some, like the Voulgaris house next to Saint Spiridon Church, still are in the hands of the original families, though the features that set them apart from the average urban Venetian apartment building are often only evident when you cross the threshold.
In later years, many families were unable to maintain this town base, and many migrated to the countryside on a permanent basis.
After union with Greece in 1864, the landed gentry gradually lost their riches and status. In 1912, the Corfu Land Act forced them to surrender much of their estates to the peasants who worked it, though some retained enough land to make agricultural life viable. Until the 1960s when developing tourism swept away the labour base, the Manessis family’s San Stefano estate still ran to 240 acres, as did the Kourkoumelis estate at Afra, but here the land once stretched to five thousand acres.
Land rich and cash poor. In her delightful book about Corfu (in Greek), Ninetta Laskari of Agios Markos remembers the ‘poverty food’ they would eat in times of need: ‘When we had nothing to eat, we would take a couple of handfuls of olives in brine, five or six onions, thyme, oil and garlic. We soaked the olives all night, then cooked them to form a bitter paste. We drained this and put it in a frying pan with oil, seasonings, onions, garlic and water to cover. We stirred it while it cooked so it didn’t burn, until all the water evaporated.’
The last century saw many of the landed families living in genteel poverty. Many estates were broken up, mansions decayed and were abandoned. Some, like the Manessis, saw where the future lay and moved into tourism, and a huge hotel stands close to their famous mansion, still in the family. At Fundana, Spiros Spathas, descendent of the Giallinas family, converted storage areas into lovely studios for visitors, enabling him to maintain his mansion as a family home.
For other mansions, standing derelict in the countryside, this could be the only solution. |
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