Nicosia, Cyprus's divided capital

I arrived in Cyprus’s divided capital of Nicosia by bus from Larnaca, on the south coast. I first spent a couple of days in the south of the city, the Greek-inhabited capital of the internationally recognised state, before crossing over to the north through the pedestrian Ledra Street crossing. The city is known in Greek by its older name, Lefkosia, and in Turkish as Lefkoşa, rather than the Frankish Nicosia.

The first crossing between the north and south of the island after the 1974 Turkish invasion was opened in 2003. Passing through the pedestrian Ledra Street crossing in the centre of the city is now a quick and painless affair. Very few people were crossing on the days that I passed to and from the north of the city, and I was through in minutes, with just cursory checks of my passport. On my first afternoon in the city, I saw a group of girls arriving in south Nicosia through the crossing, and being stopped by a Greek Cypriot policeman who asked, in English, where they were from? “Lefkoşa”, replied one of the girls. “You are Cyrpiot?” asked the policeman? “Yes”, they replied, and he waved them through without further fuss. An apparently normal occurrence, a group of Turkish Cypriot girls visiting the south of their city. Who knows what they planned to do? Perhaps some shopping. South Nicosia has the well-known western brands of clothes shops that are not found in the north.

Nicosia became the capital of Byzantine Cyprus in the 10th century, its relatively safe inland position preferred to coastal settlements such as the ancient city of Salamis, close to present-day Famagusta, which had been plagued by frequent Arab raids. The Frankish Lusignan dynasty, which ruled the island from the end of the 12th century, fortified the city, as well as building the gothic Cathedral of St Sophia and other Catholic churches and palaces. The impressive walls we see today, with their star shape and eleven bastions, were built by the Venetians, who ruled for nearly a hundred years from the late 15th century.

The Kyrenia Gate, then and now

As with Famagusta and Kyrenia, the Venetians substantially upgraded the city’s fortifications in preparation for an expected Ottoman attack. For the most part the walls are still intact, although in places they were breached in the 20th century to make way for modern roads into and out of the old city. The Kyrenia gate, in the north of the city, one of the three city gates built by the Venetians, now stands in a gap in the wall, with roads passing either side. A postcard from 1922 shows the walls linking up with the gate, with paths sloping up on to the walls on either side. The walls are better cared for in the south of the city. In the north they are overgrown with greenery and the ground level is higher, burying the lower part of the walls and diminishing their impressive bulk.

The efforts the Venetians put into building the walls were to no avail. When the Ottoman force invaded Cyprus in June 1520, the Venetians withdrew to their fortified towns, Nicosia, Kyrenia and Famagusta. The siege of Nicosia began in July, and lasted only seven weeks. The victorious Ottomans set about massacring the inhabitants, sparing only the women and children, who were sold into slavery. The city was ransacked, and St Sophia’s and other Catholic churches were converted into mosques. Nicosia remained the administrative seat of the island under the Ottomans, but it was devastated by the conquest, its population reduced to not much more than 1,000 from the 21,000 it had been under the Venetians.

The city recovered under Ottoman rule, unlike the coastal city of Famagusta, whose walled old town has a somewhat ghostly appearance, many of the buildings from the Venetian and Lusignan periods left to crumble, the empty spaces left empty, and relatively little new Ottoman construction. In Nicosia, by contrast, the Ottomans left their mark. The notable Ottoman-era architecture is more to be found on the northern side of the city. Long before the division of the city into Greek and Turkish halves in the 1960s, Muslims settled in greater numbers in the north of the city, where the seat of the governor of the island, the Konak or Saray was situated. The Saray, which had earlier been the palace of the Lusignan kings and Venetian governors, was demolished during the period of British rule, and replaced by law courts. The square is still known to locals as Sarayonu square, despite being officially named after Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic. In its centre stands a column which had been brought to the city by the Venetians from the ancient city of Salamis. The fine-looking law courts are typical of civic buildings from the British period, bright and open, with shady colonnaded terraces, a style appropriate for the Mediterranean, quite unlike architecture of the period in Britain. There are other, more familiar mementoes of British rule, notably the post boxes with the initials of British monarchs, now painted yellow in the south of the island.

Buyuk Han

Perhaps the loveliest building in Nicosia is the Buyuk Han, the Great Han, a caravanserai or inn built shortly after the Ottoman conquest. Its layout is fairly typical of caravanserais around the middle east and central Asia, a square two-story building around a large central courtyard, with colonnaded terraces off which there are rooms which on the ground floor were used for commerce and on the first floor as accommodation for travelling merchants. In the courtyard is a small mosque which was for the use of travellers. Under British rule the han was briefly a prison, and then reverted to its original purpose, as an inn and shops. For a while it served as accommodation for poor families. The building was beautifully restored in the 1990s, and now houses handicraft and souvenir shops, as well as cafes with terraces on the courtyard. It was particularly lovely in the late afternoons, when the January sunshine slanted on to the sandstone arches of the courtyard, while visitors sat and drank their tea or coffee.

Typically of Cyprus, many of the buildings of the Ottoman period were converted Lusignan churches. Nearby the Buyuk Han is the Buyuk Hammam, the Ottoman baths, which had previously been the Church of St George of the Latins. It appears lower than it would have been, as a result of the rising of the street level over time. Also nearby is the Selimiye Cami, Nicosia’s biggest mosque, once the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Sophia. Its conversion to a mosque involved the building of two minarets either side of its entrance. Strung between them today are the flags of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognised only by Turkey. Like the converted Cathedral of St Nicholas in Famagusta, on the inside the gothic arches and vaulted ceiling of St Sophia’s have been whitewashed. The tombs of Lusignan kings lie beneath the carpeted floor whose lines point Muslims towards Mecca, its direction indicated by the ornate Mihrab on the side of the cathedral. In the southern, Greek part of the city is the Omeriye mosque, built on the site of the 14th century Church of St Mary, part of an Augustinian monastery. The church was badly damaged during the Ottoman siege, and was rebuilt as a mosque, with the addition of a minaret. However, the outline of the original church is clear to see, with its apse at the farthest end from the entrance, where the alter had once stood. On the outside, behind the minaret, a small rose window can be seen.

Selimiye Cami

Next to the Selimiye Cami is a partially ruined building that has been re-purposed multiple times over the centuries, the Bedestan, or covered market. This started out in the Byzantine period as an Orthodox Church. The Gothic entrance across from the Selimiye Cami dates from the Lusignan period, when it may have served as a Catholic church for a time. Under Ottoman rule it became the Bedestan. When the British took over in Cyprus in the 1870s, they wanted to convert it back into a church, but were unable to do so due to the Islamic prohibition on having a shrine of another religion close to a mosque. Having been recently renovated, it is now a cultural centre.

The south of the city was and is predominantly Greek, and includes the Archbishop’s residence and the Orthodox cathedral, as well as the residence of the Dragoman, a senior Greek official who was the link between the Ottoman authorities and the Greek Orthodox population. The present-day archbishop’s palace, which was built in the 1950s, is large, with spacious grounds. Perhaps this reflects the importance of the Orthodox Church in Cyprus’s history. Archbishop Kyprianos, whose bust stands outside the palace, founded the Pancyprian Gymnasium, the island’s first secondary school, in 1812, and was among more than 400 Greek Cypriots who were executed by the Ottomans in 1821, in response to the wide support of the Greek community for Greece’s independence struggle. Archbishop Makarios III held a leading position in the Greek Cypriot community as it struggled for independence from Britain in the 1950s, and became the country’s first president following independence in 1960. The Cathedral of St John the Theologian, in contrast to the archbishop’s place, is a small, modest building. Built on the site of a Benedictine monastery, it had been turned over to the Orthodox Church in the 15th century, and the church was rebuilt in the 17th. Its modest exterior was required by the Ottoman authorities, but on the inside the cathedral is fabulously ornate.

Not far from the cathedral and the archbishop’s palace is the residence of Cyprus’s most noted dragoman, Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios, who held office in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The term dragoman literally means interpreter, but his duties were much more extensive, including collecting taxes from the Christian population on behalf of the Ottoman authorities. He was a powerful figure, and the opportunity to cream off his share of the taxes enabled him to accumulate great wealth. His fine house, now a museum, attests to that wealth, and is a fascinating insight into how a powerful Christian figure in Ottoman Cyprus could live. The reception room, with its ornate wood carvings and low divans around the walls, indicates that the Greek Cypriot elite in many ways lived in much the same style as their Turkish overlords. However, Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios’s power and the heavy taxes he collected were resented. He was executed in Istanbul in 1809.

Wandering the streets of Nicosia, there are many beautiful districts where the traditional buildings from the Ottoman period, with their covered balconies, have been preserved, and in many cases sensitively restored. This is particularly the case in the north of the city, perhaps because the relative economic stagnation of north Cyprus meant there was less new development in the old city than was the case in the south. The Arabahmet quarter, in the east of the city, close to the city walls just north of the green line, is particularly attractive. Many of the inhabitants of the district had been Armenian, clustered around their church. There had been an Armenian community in Cyprus for centuries, but during intercommunal violence in 1963-64, when the city was divided between its Turkish north and Greek south, the Armenian quarter found itself in the Turkish north, and the Armenians themselves were expelled. In subsequent decades much of the Abrahmet district and the Armenian church fell into decay and dereliction. More recently the quarter is gradually being renovated, the old houses beautifully restored. While the Armenians are gone, their church has been restored by the UN. It was open when I visited, but without its flock, its community, it was an empty and rather forlorn place.

Close by the Armenian church, right on the green line, next to the Paphos gate, and just beyond the barbed-wire-topped barrier, is a Roman Catholic Church. A little further south is the Maronite church. The Maronite community has existed for centuries in Cyprus, although their numbers have dwindled since the middle ages. They had mainly lived in a few villages in the north of the island, but following the Turkish invasion almost all of them moved to the south.

On the two sides of the city are museums which attest to the different versions of the history of this bitterly divided island. In the south of the city, close to the Orthodox Cathedral, is the National Struggle Museum, dedicated to the struggle against British rule from 1955-1959. It is uncomfortable viewing for a British visitor. The armed struggle had as its aim unification, Enosis, with Greece. It was led by Georgios Grivas, a Cypriot who had served for many years as an officer in Greece’s army, and who founded the EOKA guerrilla organisation. As well as weapons and other possessions of the EOKA fighters, the museum contains photos of killed EOKA members, some of them tortured or executed by the British. Some historians assert that claims of torture by the British were exaggerated and inflated by EOKA for propaganda purposes. Nevertheless, in 2012 the British Foreign Office released documents alleging torture and other abuses by British soldiers. In 2019 the British government agreed to pay £ 1 million to 33 Greek Cypriots who claimed they had been tortured, although without admitting liability.

It is not clear to me why the British government of the time felt it necessary to fight an ultimately unsuccessful four-year war to maintain its rule in Cyprus. De-colonisation was already well under way. A number of former British colonies had already become independent, and several more would follow over the next few years. It was surely clear that the era of colonialism had passed. Shortly before the start of the Cyprus insurgency Britain had announced its intention to move its military command in the eastern Mediterranean from Egypt to Cyprus. No doubt Cyprus appeared to be strategically vital. But Britain could surely have reached agreement with a newly independent Cyprus to retain its military bases, as indeed happened after independence in 1960. Yet at the time the British government maintained that decolonisation should not apply to Cyprus.

The war in Cyprus was a senseless waste, and worse than that, it had long-term damaging consequences, especially in exacerbating intercommunal tensions between the island’s Greeks and Turks. The island’s Turks vehemently opposed Enosis, and thousands of them were recruited by the British as auxiliary police in the struggle against EOKA. This inevitably inflamed tensions between the two communities, as Turks responded to Greek demands for Enosis with their own demand for Taksim, partition of the island. For its part, EOKA extended its attacks against the British to the Turkish community.

In the end, the Greek Cypriots did not achieve the desired Enosis with Greece, and had to settle for an independent state, under an agreement guaranteed by Britain, Greece and Turkey. Most Greek Cypriots were not satisfied, and continued to strive for Enosis, with disastrous consequences, as the coup in 1974 in the name of Enosis provoked the Turkish invasion of the island. On one of the bastions of the city wall is the Liberty Monument, which commemorates the release of EOKA fighters in 1959, prior to independence the following year, one of many monuments to EOKA men in southern Cyprus. But the aftermath of the violence that brought independence left a bitter hangover.

The independence war, with the intercommunal violence that it involved, soured the already strained relations between Greeks and Turks on the island. The baleful influence of both Greece and Turkey made matters worse. Greece’s military junta was behind the coup in favour of Enosis in July 1974 that prompted the Turkish invasion. The Turkish Cypriot minority looked upon the prospect of Enosis with terror, having seen the fate of the Cretan Muslim population who had been forced to leave Crete in 1923 as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

In the north of Nicosia, Cyprus’s Turks have their own National Struggle Museum. It tells a very different story to that of its counterpart a few hundred yards away in the south. In its telling, EOKA was a terrorist organisation aiming not only to drive out the British and achieve Enosis, but at the elimination of the Turkish community. The 1974 Turkish invasion is presented as a “peace operation” to provide “a peaceful environment for both communities.” The museum contains a memorial to those who died in “the struggle to preserve the Turkish existence in Cyprus.”

The Turkish Cypriot position is related even more vividly at the Museum of Barbarism, in the house of Dr Nihat Ilhan in the suburbs north of the old city. Intercommunal tension and violence had continued after independence in 1960, involving the displacement of Turkish Cypriots into enclaves. This reached a peak at the end of 1963. On the night of 24 December that year, while Dr Ilhan was on duty with Turkish Cypriot paramilitaries, Greek Cypriot irregulars came to his home and murdered his wife and three children, as well as a neighbour. Harrowing photographs in the house show the three children and their mother dead in the bath. There are also photographs depicting other atrocities against the Turkish community. The violence led to the deaths of 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots, as well as the displacement of some 25,000 Turkish Cypriots.

The Green Line, Abrahmet quarter

Following the December 1963 violence, a British general commanding a joint peacekeeping force with Greece and Turkey (a precursor of the UN peacekeeping force) drew an agreed line in green along a map demarking a Turkish North and Greek south of the city. As a consequence of the Turkish invasion in 1974 this green line was extended across the whole island. The green line remains a scar across the city, of abandoned streets and derelict buildings, in what was once its bustling heart. It is easier to approach the line in the Turkish north than in the Greek south, where soldiers keep watch from guard posts painted in the blue and white stripes of Greece’s flag, warning people not to take photos. On the northern side, while there are signs warning that it is a forbidden zone, it is possible to peer into the ghostly dilapidated streets. To someone not used to it, it seems quite bizarre. Just a few yards from narrow old-city streets with bars and shops, you come upon walls topped with barbed wire, beyond them the abandoned ruins of the green line, and just a short distance further the Greek south of the city.

The best place to get a view over Nicosia is from the top floor viewing point of the Shacolas Tower, in the south of the city. From that vantage point, one gets perhaps the best view of the Selimiye Cami. Surrounded by the narrow streets of the old city, it is hard to get a proper view from close up. Looking east towards the Abrahmet district, you can see the Maronite church and the nearby Catholic Church on the green line. Just to the north is the Ledra Palace Hotel, once Nicosia’s finest. Now stranded on the green line, after 1974 it had for decades served as the headquarters of the UN mission. But in 2019 it was vacated due to inadequate health and safety measures. On a mountainside north of the city a vast, provocative TRNC flag has been painted. Alongside, on a painted flag of Turkey, is the famous quote from Ataturk, in Turkish, “How Happy is the One Who Says I am a Turk.” Many Cypriots still live in hope that such provocations, and the bad memories of strife and violence, could one day be put behind. That Cypriots from both communities now travel back and forth and have renewed mutual contacts may give cause for that hope. Younger Cypriots are perhaps less burdened by the tragedies of the past. The incentives to reunite are strong, especially for the north, internationally isolated and unable to fulfil its potential. But the persistent failure to find a solution indicates that the obstacles remain great.

Famagusta, Cyprus's ghost town

My first sight of Famagusta was from a hill overlooking the town in nearby Deryneia. Famagusta, known as Gazimağusa in Turkish, was occupied by the Turkish army during the 1974 invasion, and incorporated into the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is only recognised by Turkey. Having overrun Famagusta, from which the Greek Cypriot population fled, the Turkish army stopped short of Deryneia, which remains under the control of the internationally recognised government of Cyprus. On the edge of Deryneia is the Cultural Centre of Famagusta Municipality, also known as the Cultural Centre of Occupied Famagusta. An information centre about Famagusta as it once was and what became of it, the Cultural Centre also has a viewing point on its roof, where visitors can borrow binoculars to look across to nearby Famagusta.

I travelled to Deryneia by bus from Larnaca, across the territory of the Dhekelia British military base, one of two British sovereign bases on the island. Apart from signposts pointing to the military area, and a wire fence surrounding it, there was little obvious difference between this British territory and the rest of Cyprus. Deryneia is a small town, and I made straight for the Cultural Centre. Looking out towards Famagusta, even with the binoculars, I could not make out very much. Across the fields, in the foreground, the flags of Turkey and of the TRNC stood out on high flag poles above low buildings. The flags are similar, like negative and positive images of each other. The Turkish flag, a white crescent moon and star on a red background, the TRNC flag the same, but with the colours reversed, and with the addition of two red bands at the top and the bottom. Nearby is the Deryneia crossing point between the north and south of the island, one of the most recent such crossing points to be opened, just over a year before my visit, in November 2018.

I chatted with a lady who worked in the Cultural Centre. She could see her former home from the building, she told me. It was just one kilometre away, on the Turkish-occupied side. She had been only a teenager when they had fled in a hurry before the Turkish army advance in 1974. As with all the main towns in Cyprus, north and south, Famagusta had had a Greek majority. Prior to the 1974 invasion, there was no Turkish north or Greek south. Greeks and Turks lived side by side all over the island, except for the capital Nicosia, which had been partitioned in 1964. There had been Greek and Turkish villages, but the towns had been mixed. The Greeks of Famagusta had mainly lived in Varosha, a district of modern blocks of flats and hotels strung out along the beaches south of the old walled city. Not long after the Ottoman conquest of Famagusta in 1571, the Greek population was banished from the walled city, and many of them settled south of the city walls, the origin of Varosha. In the 20th century Varosha flourished. It was the main centre of Cyprus’s tourism industry, and in the early 1970s played host to international film stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Brigitte Bardot. The lady in the Cultural Centre spoke wistfully of those times, of what a wonderful town Famagusta had been. But Varosha had become a ghost town. Following the invasion, the Turks fenced off Varosha. Its Greek inhabitants were not allowed to return, and Turks were not allowed to settle there. The district had been left to crumble and rot.

The lady told me that the Turks kept Varosha as a bargaining chip, promising that, as part of a settlement, the district’s Greeks would be allowed to return. She had voted against the United Nations Annan Plan, named after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, for the reunification of Cyprus in 2004. Three-quarters of Greek Cypriots had voted against in the referendum, whereas nearly two-thirds of Turkish Cypriots had voted in favour. She said she had three reasons: that under the plan the Turkish army would have remained on the island; that the return of people displaced by the invasion to their homes would be limited and slow; and that the plan was in several respects too vague, and left too much scope for interpretation. She feared that in such circumstances, the stronger party, Turkey, would retain the advantage.

Land Gate, Famagusta

I crossed into northern Cyprus in Nicosia a few days later, and travelled in a minibus down to Famagusta. The minibus dropped me just outside the old town walls. They are an impressive sight, four and a half centuries after they were breached by the Ottoman conquerors of Cyprus. In the long history of conflict between Venice and the Ottomans in the eastern Mediterranean, the battle for Cyprus was among the hardest fought and most bitter, and it was at Famagusta that the Venetians had made their stand. I entered the old city through the Land Gate, next to the Ravelin Bastion, renamed the White Bastion by the Turks, because it was here that the Venetians flew the white flag of surrender. The Venetians had blown the bastion up as its breach by the Ottomans seemed imminent, killing as many as 1,000 Ottoman troops, it was claimed, as well as many Venetians. Inside the gate is a broad ramp leading up to the walls, up which cannon would have been dragged.

Medieval Famagusta had thrived on the trade between the European west and the Islamic east, especially after the fall of Acre in 1291 brought an end to the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and an influx of Christian merchants and craftsmen into Famagusta. Cyprus was under the rule of the French Lusignan, or Frankish dynasty, that had been gifted the island by Richard the Lionheart after he conquered it from its Byzantine ruler during the Third Crusade. The Byzantine Governor, and pretender to the Imperial throne, Isaac Komnenos, had incurred Richard’s wrath by imprisoning survivors from three of his ships who washed up on the Cyprus shore, and by mistreating his sister and fiancé.

Under Lusignan rule, the wealth of Famagusta’s trade paid for magnificent Catholic churches that would look more in place in northern France than in the eastern Mediterranean. The Lusignans favoured the Catholic Church, while the Greek Orthodox Cypriots were over-taxed and downtrodden. In the 14th century, Cyprus became caught up in the rivalry between Genoa and Venice, and in 1372 the Genoese seized Famagusta. However, the tables were turned when Cyprus’s Lusignan King James II married a Venetian, Caterina Cornaro. Following the death of her husband and of their infant son, James III, Caterina became Queen of Cyprus in her own right in 1474, and in 1489, under pressure from her native city, she handed the island over to Venice.

The new Venetian rulers made extensive preparations for expected Ottoman attacks, renewing and expanding the fortifications of Nicosia, Kyrenia and Famagusta, adapting them for the age of sieges with artillery. At the outset of the Ottoman siege of the town, the Venetian defenders numbered some 8,500. They held out for nearly a year against an Ottoman army reckoned to have been more than 100,000 strong. By the time the town fell, in August 1571, fewer than 1,000 defenders remained alive, and the Turkish dead numbered more than 50,000. As the end approached, the Venetian commander, Marco Antonio Bragadin, negotiated surrender terms. However, as Bragadin surrendered, the Ottoman commander, Lala Mustafa Pasha, who was originally from Bosnia, accused him of killing Ottoman prisoners and reneged on the agreement. Bragadin was mutilated and tortured before being flayed alive.

Lala Pasha Mustafa Mosque (St Nicholas Cathedral), Famagusta

Following the Ottoman conquest, Famagusta lost its importance as a commercial and political centre. To the visitor today it is striking how little the Ottomans did with Famagusta. Much of the old walled city was simply left to decay. The gothic cathedral of the Lusignans, once dedicated to St Nicholas but badly damaged during the siege, was re-purposed as a mosque with the addition of a stumpy little minaret at the corner of one of the destroyed cathedral towers. It was a half-hearted conversion, as if the conquerors couldn’t be much bothered. On the outside it looks like what it is, a ruined cathedral that was never properly repaired. Inside, the gothic arches and vaulted ceiling of a medieval French cathedral are as impressive as they must have been in their Christian heyday, with the addition of a Mihrab on a side wall, pointing the direction of Mecca, and a pulpit, or Minbar, from where the imam delivers his Friday sermons. But now the walls are whitewashed, without paintings or statues of saints, without stained glass windows.

The nearby Sinan Pasha Camii, once the Church of St Peter and St Paul, has a similar look. A large hulk of a church, with a sawn-off stump of a minaret in one corner from the time when it was a mosque. Nowadays it is used for performances. It was locked when I arrived, but I was able to go in thanks to a group of people who were planning an event to take place there. Its bare stone and soaring arches are more impressive on the inside that the rather forlorn and dilapidated exterior. The Church of St George of the Greeks, now a roofless ruin, but with the walls standing on three sides, must also have been an impressive sight in its day. Across from the former cathedral, now the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, is the entrance to the Venetian palace where Bragadin had lived, and in front of which he was so brutally killed. There’s not much left of the palace now. The three arches of the façade are supported by four columns taken from the nearby Roman town of Salamis.

As in many towns captured by the Ottomans from the Venetians, the conquerors left the symbols of their vanquished foes in place. The plaque with the Lion of St Mark continues to stand proudly above the entrance of the Sea Gate and over the entrance to Othello’s tower, a fortress standing at one corner of the city walls. The name of the fortress was bestowed by the British who ruled Cyprus for over 80 years until 1960, and is a reference to the principal character in Shakespeare’s tragedy, which told the story of a Moorish general in Venetian service in Cyprus.

At another corner of the city walls stands the Canbulat Bastion, named after one of the Turkish heroes killed during the conquest of Famagusta. Inside, there is a museum of the siege. Close to the bastion, inside the walls, is a small cemetery and monument to “Turks who, unarmed and defenceless, were martyred by Greek Cypriots and Greeks.” It is a reminder of the bitter memories of conflict that remain raw on both sides. The plaque, in English and German as well as Turkish, refers to an alleged attempt “to eliminate everything Turkish to achieve Enosis”, a reference to the Greek Cypriot aspiration to unity with Greece which prompted the Turkish invasion of the island.

Another sad monument to the bitterness of the Cyprus conflict is the forlorn district of Varosha, a short walk south of the old town. Fenced off and with signs warning that it is a forbidden zone, its hotels and apartment blocks crumbling, its cracked streets gradually being reclaimed by scrubby weeds and trees, it is a bleak sight. There would surely be little for the former residents to return to, many of the buildings fit for nothing but demolition. Yet Varosha, with its sandy beaches, remains highly desirable and contested. In 1984, a UN Security Council resolution demanded that Varosha be handed over to UN administration, and that no one but the expelled inhabitants be allowed to settle there. The Turks did not comply, and Varosha was left to fester. In 2019, the TRNC government announced that Varosha would be opened for settlement, a red rag to Greek Cypriots and, if it were to go ahead, an affront to the rights of the Greek former residents.

Venetian and Ottoman Crete

One of the main themes of my journey through Greece in the autumn of 2012 was visiting former territories of the Venetian Republic: Corfu; Preveza; and Chalkida/ Negropont. I finished this journey at one of the most important and longest standing of Venice’s overseas territories, Crete. Taken during the carve-up of Byzantine territory following the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, Crete was ruled by Venice for more than 400 years. Crete was much more than a trading outpost or a naval base defending the republic’s trade routes to the east. Crete was a colony. Venetian families settled there, and took the best, most productive land for themselves. Sugar plantations were established, in a medieval prototype of the later slave economy of the Caribbean. The slaves were mostly Christians seized in raids by the Crimean Tartars and sold at the Black Sea ports.

The Lion of St Mark, Rocca al Mare fortress, Heraklion

For the hordes of tourists who visit Crete, the main historical interest for most is found in the ancient Minoan sites. I had visited Knossos during an earlier stay on the island in 1996, as well as the museum in the nearby capital of the island, Heraklion. Undoubtedly the Minoan remains are remarkable. But I was put off by the garish reconstruction plucked from the imagination of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans. I had been more stirred a few years earlier by the more modest remains from the same period on the Aegean island of Santorini. No reconstruction or guesswork there. You are walking the street where the residents had strolled three and a half thousand years earlier. But on this visit I was more interested in Crete’s later history.

During two visits in 1996, I stayed in the village of Anogia, in the mountains above Heraklion. Here is a very different Crete from that of the coastal towns, with their Venetian, Ottoman and ancient remains. In isolated villages like Anogia in the island’s interior is the Crete of the Greek shepherds and goatherds who had lived there for thousands of years, outliving the comings and goings of one invader after another, their lives revolving around their flocks and their traditions. Anogia is a conservative place. The culture of the blood feud, I was told, had hardly been consigned to history. The blood feud has been, or still is, a feature of a number of such regions in the eastern Mediterranean: mountainous landscapes with pastoral societies. In this respect, there is much in common between the cultures of Montenegro, northern Albania, Sicily and Crete, as even some of the natives recognise. During my second stay in Anogia, with a group of students from around the Balkans, at one point a local Anogia lad embraced a young man from Montenegro, and declared emotionally, ‘Cretans and Montenegrins, brothers.’

Weapons are an important part of life in Crete’s interior. One evening in Anogia, sitting in a café garden, I watched as a man repeatedly walked out from a bar and fired his pistol several times into the air. What was the reason, I asked a Cretan companion? He has just heard that his wife is expecting a child, the reply. Not an occasion to stay and celebrate with his spouse, it seemed. Rather, an evening with his male friends, and his gun.

There was a wedding while I was in Anogia, a huge event, and everyone present in the village was invited, even unknown foreigners like me. They had slaughtered 300 sheep for the occasion. The mutton is boiled, and then the water is reused to cook pasta, imparting the flavour of the meat. The wedding took place in the evening, but the celebrations went on all day. On Crete, it is the groom’s family that hosts the wedding and provides the feast. Throughout the day, visitors were welcomed at his family house. I went along with my companions, a Dutchman and two Greek women from Athens. We were greeted by the groom and by his parents, and sat down to a pasta lunch, washed down with local wine. The village church was small, and most of the guests stood in the square outside, some of them wearing traditional Cretan costumes, the men in high leather boots. As the wedding came to an end, and the couple emerged from the church, the shooting began. And boy did they shoot. I had witnessed weddings involving shooting in Montenegro. Men fired pistols into the air, a dangerous and sometimes tragic practice, as the bullets come down, and from time-to-time people are hit. But in Anogia they used automatic weapons, machine guns blasting away. Afterwards the revellers dispersed around the various tavernas in the village, all of them taken over for the wedding feast. As we ate our supper – more mutton-water pasta, sprinkled with grated feta, the persistent shooting made us rather jumpy.

Anogia is well-known in Greece, owing to a notorious massacre there during the German occupation in World War II, when, as a reprisal for resistance activity, the order was given to slaughter the entire adult male population. Most of the men were away in the mountains, with the resistance, but many were killed, and the village was raised to the ground. It was rebuilt after the war. When I told some Greek friends back in Oxford that I had stayed in a village on Crete, they asked me which one? I did not suppose it likely they had heard of a small village in the mountains. But they had, and they were impressed. ‘Oh, Anogia, Anogia is famous.’

The Venetian Loggia, Heraklion

Apart from being a starting point for visits to Knossos, most people do not rate Heraklion highly as a tourist destination. Indeed, other towns on the island, such as Rethymno and Chania, are more attractive. Yet Heraklion boasts some of the most impressive Venetian remains on the island. In Venetian times, this was Candia, the island’s capital, whose name was also usually applied to the whole island. Much of the massive city walls built by the Venetians, interspersed by huge bastions, remain intact. Protecting the old harbour is the 16th century Venetian fortress of Rocca al Mare, or Koule, as it came to be known under Ottoman rule. On the fortress, as on the city walls, big stone plaques of the Lion of St Mark, symbol of Venice, remain in place. Close to the fortress, the Venetians built long, vaulted, tunnel-like shipyards, where their galleys could be built or repaired. Most have been demolished, but some remain, although no longer open to the sea. Similar shipyards are also found at Chania, at the western end of the island. The most elegant building in the city is the 17th century Loggia, the centre of civic life in Venetian times, and nowadays the town hall. Close by is the Morosini fountain, an elegant monument of now worn stone, with lions standing guard around a central bowl. It is another memento of the cultural flowering the island enjoyed during the Venetian period.

There are reminders of the period of Ottoman rule too. The Ottomans invaded Crete in 1645, after a ship carrying eminent Ottoman subjects home from their pilgrimage to Mecca was taken by the Knights of St. John, from Malta. The captors tried to land on Crete, but were turned away by port after port, eventually abandoning the vessel. Crete’s Venetian rulers did not want to risk Ottoman displeasure. Despite this, the Sultan took advantage of the opportunity to order the invasion of Crete in reprisal. With most of the island taken, the Ottoman army laid siege to Candia in 1647. The siege was to last for 22 years. The Venetian fleet attempted to seal of the Dardanelles, to prevent the supply of the Ottoman besieging force, and managed to frustrate Ottoman attempts at a naval blockade of Candia. The Venetians even won some notable naval victories.

During the siege, Crete received little support from the rest of Europe, now much less concerned with the eastern Mediterranean since its focus had shifted to the Atlantic. France, under Louis XIV, maintained good relations with the Sublime Porte, while allowing French volunteer forces to join the fight in 1668-69. To no avail, the French withdrew after they failed to push the Ottomans back, followed by other small forces from elsewhere. Finally, in 1669 the Venetians surrendered. They were granted honourable terms by the Grand Vizier, Ahmed Koprulu, an Albanian, and allowed to leave the town. Venetian power in the eastern Mediterranean had been all-but-snuffed out, despite the retention of a few bases. Venice did, however, manage to push the Ottomans back a little in Dalmatia, capturing the strategically important fortress of Klis, just inland from Split.

Crete was in Ottoman hands for more than 200 years. It was the island’s second experience of Muslim rule. For 150 years in the 9th and 10th centuries it was the Emirate of Crete, having been conquered by Arabs from Al Andalus, modern Spain. The island had been retaken for Byzantium in 960-61. There were repeated revolts against Ottoman rule by the island’s Christian population. Following the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, the island became semi-autonomous, with a Christian governor. But tensions between the island’s Christian and Muslim communities continued. Following a massacre in 1898 of several hundred Greeks, as well as 17 British soldiers and the British Consul, Ottoman forces were ordered off the island by the great powers, and replaced by four occupying powers, Britain, Russia, France and Italy. Nominally, Crete remained under Ottoman suzerainty, with a High Commissioner appointed by Athens. But Ottoman rule had effectively come to an end, and the island was incorporated into Greece in 1913.

Many Cretan Greeks had converted to Islam during the Ottoman period, and some estimates put the Muslim population of the island at almost half by the early 19th century. Some of them remained crypto-Christians in the privacy of their homes, and subsequently reverted to Christianity, while others left for mainland Turkey during the repeated violent conflicts of the 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, Muslims are reckoned to have made up not much more than 10 per cent of the population, the last of them leaving during the population exchange in 1924.

The Church of St Titus, Heraklion

The island contains several Ottoman-era remains. Of particular interest in Heraklion is the Church of St Titus. The earlier Christian church on this site had been converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. However, following its destruction by an earthquake in 1856, a new mosque was built. Following the departure of the last Muslims from Crete, it was in turn converted into a church, but it retains some typically Muslim features, notably ornate little niches in chapels on either side of the entrance, which have been adapted as Christian shrines. Another notable remnant of Ottoman times is the Sebil of Haci Ibrahim Agha, a public fountain, whose builder ordered that snow be brought regularly from the mountains during summer, so that passers-by could quench their thirst with cool, fresh water. Nowadays it houses a café. Next to it is the older Bembo fountain, named after the Venetian governor who had it built. In the run-down narrow streets of the old town are many, often dilapidated houses dating to Ottoman times, typical of that style. On the façade of one shop is an engraved sign in both Ottoman Turkish and Greek.

Rethymno, westwards along the coast from Heraklion, is a very attractive little town. Its old district, mainly dating from the Venetian period, is much better preserved than the island’s capital, with many fine buildings indicating the prosperity of Venetian Crete. In the central square, the Rimondi Fountain was once the centre of the town’s life. The nearby Loggia now houses a shop selling reproductions of classical artwork. On a hill above the old town stands the huge 16th century Fortezza fortress, claimed to be the largest of all Venetian fortresses. It had been intended to hold the entire population of the town within its walls, and at one time included the sumptuous residence of the Rector of the town. Most of the buildings within the walls are gone, but the Ottoman-era Sultan Ibrahim Mosque still stands, minus its minaret.

The Kara Pasha Mosque, Rethymno

There are other Ottoman-era buildings in Rethymno. One fine house now has shop windows on either side, but in the middle, above the entrance, is the date, 1844, and inscriptions in Greek and Ottoman Turkish. The elegant Kara Pasha Mosque, near the seafront, nestles among palm trees and bushes, the simple beauty of its domes and arches accentuated by the sunlight playing on it from different angles at different times of the day. The Neratzes Mosque, in the town centre, now houses a music school. Its exterior is graffiti covered, but the minaret is being restored. Nearby, another minaret sits alone amidst a cluster of buildings. A little outside the town centre, the Veli Pasha Mosque is in better shape, and now contains a museum.

Chania, at the western end of the island, is considered by many to be Crete’s most attractive town. It became the island’s capital during the period of the autonomous Cretan state, before unification with Greece. And in Ottoman times the Pasha of Crete resided there Eleftherios Venizelos, a leader of Greek rebellion against the Ottomans on Crete, and later Prime Minister of Greece, was from near Chania, and his final resting place is there. The town’s name originated during the Arab Emirate of Crete, when it was called Al Hanim. To the Venetians it was La Canea.

The Yali Mosque, Chania

Chania’s picturesque old harbour surrounds a bay ringed by restaurants and cafés. On one side of the harbour, the Kucuk Hassan Mosque, popularly known as the Yali (Seaside) Mosque, minus its minaret, was built in the 17th century, not long after the Ottoman conquest of the town, following a two-month siege. Jutting out on a long wall protecting the harbour is a Venetian-era lighthouse. Across the harbour from there is the low Firka fortress, where the Greek flag was first raised on the island upon unification in 1913. In the inner harbour several of the long vaulted Venetian dockyards remain.

Away from the harbour area, so popular with tourists, are some very charming quarters. Some sections of the impressive Venetian city walls, as well as bastions, remain. I particularly liked the Spiantza district, not far from the harbour, a maze of colourful lanes. At its heart is a leafy square. In contrast to the cafés of the harbour, when I visited in November, on this square I only saw Greeks, quietly sitting in the shade of the old trees. Old men seated at a café window cheerily sang along to traditional songs, while a couple of Romany boys accompanied them on an accordion. A Greek coffee here cost two or three times less than at the harbour. At one end of the square is the odd hybrid church of Agios Nikolaos. During the Ottoman period, it was converted into a mosque, and while it is now a church again, the minaret is still there, at one corner. Not far away, another minaret stands on its own.

The cultural heritage of Crete is exceptionally rich, spanning civilisations over more than three millennia, from Minoan, to Classical Greek, Byzantine, Arab, Venetian and Ottoman, and through it all, the traditional lives of the hardy Greek villagers of the mountainous interior, outlasting all the island’s varied rulers. Much of this heritage is still there to see, and as elsewhere in Greece, perhaps the more recent Venetian and Ottoman layers, as well as the older Byzantine and ancient remains, are being accorded greater value and respect than was often the case in the past. Crete’s history was frequently troubled, by war, invasion, rebellion and natural disasters. And while invaders were generally not welcome, and their rule was often oppressive, the diversity they bequeathed is today one of the island’s most appealing features.

Chalkida, a once fine city

Chalkida has little to commend it to foreign visitors. Within easy day-trip distance from Athens, it is a popular weekend destination for Athenians out for a fresh fish meal by the sea. But why would I want to go there? Eleni, whose flat I was staying in in Athens, seemed surprised. It is a modern, rather non-descript town, not very attractive. Yet in the Middle Ages, this town, known as Negropont, was perhaps the most important overseas possession of the Venetian Republic. It was the republic’s key naval base in the eastern Mediterranean, from which it controlled the Aegean, a vital outpost defending Venice’s crucial trading links with the east.

Venetian Negropont

Situated at the end of a spur of the Athens-Salonika railway line, a sign on the dilapidated train station gives the ancient name of the town, Chalcis. Chalkida is the main town of Euboea, a long, narrow island that stretches along the eastern coast of Greece. At Chalkida, the gap between the island and the mainland, the Euripos Strait, is less than 50 metres, and is spanned by a short bridge. Chalkida has long been famous for the crazy currents that race, swirling through the gap, changing direction every few hours. According to legend, Aristotle, who died in Chalcis, threw himself into the water, exasperated by his inability to explain the phenomenon. A tourist information sign by the bridge gives a technical explanation, which I struggled to understand.

Venice acquired Negropont in the aftermath of the sacking of Constantinople by a Venetian-Frankish force in 1204, along with other choice pieces picked off the body of the prostrate Byzantine Empire. Under Venetian rule, it was a heavily fortified town, surrounded by strong walls. But in 1470 the town fell to the Ottoman Empire. It was a huge blow to the republic, one of its greatest disasters in the long, steady expansion of the Ottomans into Europe.

The Sultan, Mehmet II, conqueror of Constantinople 17 years earlier, was one of the most energetic of all Ottoman rulers. He was noted for his meticulous planning and his attention to logistics. Having amassed a huge fleet and army, he ignored the bridge to the town, and built a pontoon bridge a little to the north. The siege began, Mehmet’s heavy cannon battering the walls. It soon became clear that a breach was imminent. Yet the Captain-General of the Venetian fleet, Nicolo Canal, kept his galleys out of the way. Finally, urged on by his captains, he ordered the fleet to sail down towards the pontoon bridge. Wind and tide were in his galleys’ favour, and they would surely have rammed through it. But Canal lost his nerve and ordered a withdrawal. The watching defenders saw that they had been abandoned. The following day, 12 July, the wall was breached and the Ottoman forces burst in. Still the defenders did not give in, raining roof tiles and boiling water on to the attackers. Their revenge was savage, almost the entire population being massacred. The governor, Paolo Enrizzo, surrendered on condition that he be allowed to keep his head. The Sultan obliged him by having his body severed at the waist.

On his return to Venice, Canal was arrested, tried and exiled. Many considered he was lucky not to be executed. He had had a long, illustrious career, mainly as a diplomat. He was not a military man. In any case, in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire, rampant and at the height of its power, seriously set out to seize an objective, no European power could stand against it. Mehmet the Conqueror had set his sights on Negropont, and he was not going to be denied.

The fall of Negropont, not long after the capture of Constantinople, left the whole of the eastern Mediterranean vulnerable to the expanding Ottomans. It was a catastrophe not only for Venice, but with wider significance for Europe. Gioachino Rossini wrote an opera based on the siege, Maometto II, first performed in Naples in 1820. Two years later, a revised version was performed in Venice, this time with a happy ending. In 1826, a new version was performed in Paris, no longer set in the battle for Negropont, but in the struggle between Ottomans and Greeks, under the name Le Siège de Corinthe. This was a shrewd move, nodding to the philhellenism current in Paris during the Greek independence war. It was also a homage to Lord Byron, a romantic hero for poets, artists and composers around Europe following his death in Greece in 1824. Byron had written a poem entitled The Siege of Corinth. The fall of Negropont had dropped out of European consciousness, superseded by later wars.

Chalkida became part of newly independent Greece in 1832. By the end of the 19th century, most of the old town of the Venetians and the Ottomans, as well as the surrounding walls, had been torn down. Very little is left today. In what is still known as the kastro district, despite the absence of the old walls, is the basilica of Ayia Paraskevi. Following the return of the Greek emperors to Constantinople, half a century after its sacking by the Crusaders, the seat of the Latin Patriarch in the east had been moved to Negropont. The western style is evident in the architecture of the basilica, a strange hotch-potch of Byzantine and Gothic. The building survived Ottoman rule because, like so many Byzantine churches, it was converted into a mosque under their rule. Facing the basilica is the former residence of the Venetian bailo, the governor, in a very dilapidated state, but in the process of restoration when I visited. I looked in the front entrance. Workmen were sitting around, having a break. But amongst the ruin, the high ceiling and arches running through the hallway attest to the one-time opulence of the building. Close-by the basilica is a closed 15th century mosque, without its minaret, as usual. In front of it is an ornate Ottoman fountain, which would be beautiful were it not covered in graffiti, typical of the degree of interest and respect for the Ottoman-era heritage in Greece.

On the hill on the mainland side of the bridge, across from the kastro, is the 17th century Karababa fortress, built by the Ottomans. As I walked in the gateway, a large pack of feral dogs resting under the trees raised their heads. Some of them began to bark and growl. As I stood their uncertainly, a couple of large beasts started to walk purposefully, menacingly towards me. I beat a retreat. But I wanted to look round the fort. I looked around for weapons. Armed with a heavy stick and a few rocks, I walked gingerly back in, but this time I made my way quickly away from the dogs, behind some buildings and a make-shift stage, presumably left over from some kind of performance. Out of sight of the dogs, I found a way up on to the ledge that went around the inside of the wall of the fort. Safe now, I walked along to the far end of the castle.

There, among the arches of the tower at the end of the fort, is a marvellous museum. It contains exhibits from the Byzantine, through the Venetian and Ottoman periods, ending with the early period of Greek independence (another museum in the town covers the ancient period). I was met at the entrance by a huge man, looking very much like a hairy biker type. He gave me a full tour. The exhibits were organised by period, with explanations in English as well as Greek. Belying his appearance, my guide quickly proved to be highly knowledgeable, as he explained to me the development of Byzantine architecture as revealed in the exhibits.

Most fascinating of all to me, in the Venetian section were several carvings of the Lion of Saint Mark, symbol of Venice. They had once been fixed into the town walls. The Ottomans, as elsewhere, were untroubled by the presence of the symbols of the former rulers, and had left them in place. Later, they had been saved when the walls were demolished. Some of them were very large, much larger than I had seen in most Venetian cities, indicating the importance of Negropont. But particularly extraordinary were two examples of lions that were unmistakably of Chinese design. Of course, Venice had trading links with China, strung out along the Silk Road. My guide told me that Marco Polo was believed to have visited Negropont. But I had never before seen such clear evidence of Chinese influence on Venice, and, no less, on the symbol of the republic.

Among the exhibits are engravings of Chalkida during the Venetian and Ottoman periods. Both show a fine city, surrounded by walls, the first with church steeples, the second with minarets. I asked my guide when it had happened, who had pulled down the walls and the fine buildings, was it the Turks? No, it was the Greeks! What had possessed them? The town today, a mixture of modern blocks and dilapidated wrecks, makes me almost despair. Not for the first, nor the last time in Greece, I wondered what moved people to trash so many fine old towns? When I mentioned it to Eleni, in Athens, she responded by recalling an interview she had seen with a leading politician from Venice. Asked what Venetians would do if their city was finally engulfed by the sea, he replied that they would build something else. For Eleni, this was a good response; the new replaces the old. Yet no one could persuade me that the travesty of modern Chalkida is an improvement on what came before, any more than I could look on the loss of Venice with equanimity.

The rich Venetian and Ottoman heritage that graces other parts of the Balkans has been effaced in much of Greece, its remnants left to decay. The relics of the ancient and Byzantine worlds are assiduously preserved, but little value appears to have been attached to the Venetian and Ottoman inheritance. Maybe the excellent museum in Chalkida is evidence of a change of heart. Certainly my guide was keen to preserve all of his town’s heritage, through all its stages. He had given me an outstanding tour, and was a font of expertise. As I left, I asked him whether he was an archaeologist by profession. ‘Oh no’, he chuckled, ‘I am just the security guard.’

Venetians, Serbs and others on Corfu

The idea of visiting Corfu in October held many attractions for me, not least the chance to extend summer, cheat the seasons and escape the autumnal weather of northern Europe. Corfu city is a very attractive town, if rather overwhelmed by mass tourism, even outside the main tourist season. Monstrous cruise liners stand off the new harbour, mercifully some distance away from the historic quarter of the town, spewing off their crowds day after day. What do they come for? As I waited for information at a tourism office by the entrance of one of the town’s two massive fortresses, the man behind the desk tried to point out some of the town’s sites to two elderly ladies. Their response? And where do we go for shopping? For some, it seems, tourism is an enhanced shopping opportunity.

Corfu looks quite different to other parts of Greece, reflecting its very different history. Unlike the rest of the country, it never fell to Ottoman rule. For centuries it was a key stronghold of the Venetian Empire, guarding the mouth of the Adriatic. That Venetian heritage is evident in the town’s architecture, with its narrow streets and multi-storied buildings, often with colonnaded fronts. It is said that the Veneto dialect, once spoken alongside Greek, could still be heard in Corfu within living memory, and a small Roman Catholic population remains on the island, some of them descendants of Maltese immigrants and others of the old Venetian families.

The Ottomans tried repeatedly to capture the island, but the Venetian and Corfiot defenders held on. Looking at the two colossal fortresses that stand at either side of the old town, you can see how. At the entrance of the Old Fort stands a statue of Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, a German who led the successful defence against the final Ottoman siege in 1716. Schulenburg had had a distinguished military career, including fighting under Prince Eugene of Savoy and the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession.

The Old Fort, Corfu

The Old Fort is a bit of an architectural hotchpotch today. Atop the massive bastions of the Venetian citadel stand square, brick 19th century British barracks that would be more at home in Woolwich than on a Mediterranean island. The island was governed by Britain for half a century after the Napoleonic wars, and it too has left a lasting mark. Even more bizarre is the mock classical St. George’s church, built by the British in the fort’s grounds. Several cannon are displayed inside the fort, with information about where they were made and to which armies they belonged. Some are British, some Venetian, and one is Russian, from the brief period when Russian forces occupied the island during the Napoleonic Wars. Some of the mortars, dating from the 17th century and used by the army of the Serene Republic, were also made in England. Behind St. George’s, I came across several other cannon lying around. On closer inspection, there was the crest with ‘G R’ below a crown; George III.

The vast walls of the New Fort loom over the old port. Built by the Venetians, it is in fact only a little newer than the Old Fort, which was originally built during the earlier Byzantine period. Both have been repeatedly restored, enhanced and rebuilt over the centuries. If anything the New Fort is the more impressive, with its huge curving walls. I looked in vain for the Lion of Saint Mark, emblem of Venice, which I had been led to believe could be found in the New Fort. The lady at the ticket office said there were none. However, at the Old Fort, a stone plaque of the Lion was on display, removed from the wall to which it had once been fixed. The Lion, with its mouth curled in a rather odd, friendly smile, can be seen above the entrance to the reconstructed Venetian barracks that had been destroyed in the German bombing in 1943. Under British rule, the building housed the Ionian Academy, the first such institution of higher education in modern Greece. In front of it stands a statue of Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of modern Greece, and a native of Corfu. In an illustrious career, Kapodistrias had earlier been Russian foreign minister, but he did not do so well as Greek head of state, and was assassinated in 1831.

After Napoleon rubbed out the Venetian Republic in 1797, Corfu passed to French control. It did not last long, and in 1799 the French were ousted by a Russian-Ottoman force, and Corfu became the capital of the autonomous Septinsular (Seven Island) Republic, under Ottoman suzerainty, with Kapodistrias as Chief Minister. The Russian action is commemorated by a plaque on the little island of Vido, just across from Corfu city. The plaque, unveiled in 2011, and flanked by Russian and Greek flags, has a pointed message for the Greece of today, with its troubled relations with the western-dominated European Union, about the historical ties between the two countries,: ‘To the Greeks and Russians who died for the Orthodox faith of their fathers…’ The French returned in 1807, and remained until the arrival of the British, following the defeat of Napoleon. The French tenure was brief, but they left a lasting mark, notably the colonnaded Liston, nowadays crammed with cafes, that gives on to the Esplanade, a large expanse of green, beyond which is the Old Fort.

The British established a protectorate, the United States of the Ionian Islands, with its capital in Corfu, with a British Lord High Commissioner and an advisory parliament. The former parliament building has a stone plaque outside the entrance commemorating the parliament’s vote in in 1863 in favour of the union of the Ionian isles with Greece, ‘by will of the Ionian people and with the consent of the protecting power Great Britain.’ The islands formally united with Greece the following year. Many signs of the British period remain, not least the Ionian Academy and the grand former residence of the British High Commissioners, the Palace of Saints Michael and George, at one end of the Esplanade, now a museum. In front of the palace stands a statue of Sir Fredrick Adam, one of the High Commissioners, while at the other end of the Esplanade, close to the Ionian Academy, is the Maitland Rotunda, commemorating another British High Commissioner, Sir Thomas Maitland. But perhaps the most poignant memento of British influence is a cricket pitch on the Esplanade, in front of the palace on one side and the Liston on another. I watched a group of local youths playing cricket on the pitch, very badly, it must be said.

Among the various foreign rulers and visitors who left their mark on Corfu, in 1916 the Serbian army came, not as conquerors, but as refugees. Defeated by combined Austrian, German and Bulgarian attacks, the Serbian army retreated through Montenegro and Albania in the winter of 1915-16, together with their elderly King and numerous civilians. They died in their thousands during their journey, from cold, disease, exhaustion, starvation, and the attacks of Albanians who harried them all the way. This terrible death march, known to Serbs as the ‘Albanian Golgotha’, ended when allied ships transported them from the Albanian ports of Durres and Vlora to Corfu. Some 150,000 arrived, but their sufferings had not ended. Adequate provision for them had not yet been made in time for their arrival on the island, and they continued to die.

The Serbian Mausoleum, Vido, Corfu

The Serbian House in Corfu city is a museum dedicated to this not widely known episode in the history of the First World War. As well as artefacts from the time, it contains numerous photographs of the retreat and of the time spent on Corfu. Many of the photos are harrowing. Some of the newly arrived soldiers, as well as the corpses, look like mere bags of bones, reminiscent of holocaust photographs from World War II. Thousands ended their lives in a hospital on the island of Vido, from where they were taken in boats for burial at sea, the ‘Blue Graveyard’ commemorated in a poem by Milutin Bojić, who took part in the retreat. A plaque below the Serbian Mausoleum on Vido contains lines from the poem. At the spot where ferries from Corfu now arrive on Vido, another plaque, next to the one commemorating the Russian capture of the island in 1799, marks the place from where boats laden with their grisly cargos put off in 1916. In fact, the coat of arms on the mausoleum is not that of Serbia, but of the pre-World War II Kingdom of Yugoslavia, combining the emblems of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. An inscription in large letters over the entrance reads ‘Serbian Heroes Yugoslavia.’ In 1918, when the Serbian army stormed northwards and westwards from the Salonika Front, winning a state more than twice the size of their pre-war kingdom, it might have seemed that the sufferings in 1915-16 had been rewarded.

The tragedy of the retreat across Albania and the arrival on Corfu was not given much attention during the communist decades in Yugoslavia. The communist regime, basing its legitimacy on the partisan struggle against foreign occupation during the Second World War, preferred to avoid discussion of events earlier in the century, beyond damning stereotypes of Great Serbian nationalism and Croatian Fascism. The connection with the elderly King, who comes across as a heroic figure, sharing the sufferings of his troops, whose frailty at times meant he had to be carried over the mountains, was also awkward for the communists. But nowadays Serbia has been rediscovering its past, and has begun to pay greater attention to this both heroic and tragic episode in its history. Serbian leaders regularly visit the island to pay homage to the heroes of the past. Standing on the walls of the New Fort, I watched the little Vido ferry returning with a group of Serbs on a historical tour, a large Serbian flag flying proudly from the mast. Opposite the Serbian House, a Serbian souvenir shop sells mementoes of the Serbian army’s time on Corfu to the numerous Serb tourists who visit the island.

After the first difficult weeks, the Serbs’ stay on Corfu became more tolerable for the survivors, as some of the photos attest. Naked soldiers were photographed frolicking in the sea. Officers stroll in the town, and go on outings with Corfiot friends, many women among them. One photo shows a wedding between a Serbian officer and a Corfiot woman. In the meantime, the troops paraded and trained for their return to the front.

In the spring of 1916, the Serbian army left Corfu, travelling eastwards to re-join the war on the Salonika Front. But the Serbian government and parliament remained on Corfu until 1918, basing themselves in the grand municipal theatre, which was destroyed by the German bombardment in 1943. The theatre was replaced by a nondescript concrete box typical of post-World War II architecture. I walked round the graffiti-covered, crumbling building, its bare concrete colonnades stinking of urine and smothered in pigeon shit. No one cares about such a building, and even the vandals recognise its worthlessness. The local government has considered pulling it down and replacing it with a replica of the old theatre. In any case, they should pull it down.

The signatories of the Corfu declaration,

Nikola Nikola Pašić (with beard) and Ante Trumbić in the middle

In 1917, a key meeting took place on Corfu between representatives of the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee, a group of South Slav politicians from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who had been lobbying the western powers in favour of the formation of a united Yugoslav state. The so-called Corfu Declaration was signed by Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić and Ante Trumbić of the Yugoslav Committee, committing to post-war unification. The Serbian House exhibits photographs of the participants in the discussions. But it was a flawed agreement. The Yugoslav Committee had a very tenuous mandate to speak on behalf of the South Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And the Serbs were only lukewarm about the idea, preferring the expansion of Serbia to include all Serb-inhabited lands, leaving out Slovenia and rump bits of north-west Croatia in which they were not interested. The idea of a union of equals never attracted most Serbs.

The Serbian army was joined in its retreat to Corfu by several foreign medical staff. One of them was a remarkable lady called Flora Sandes, who became the only British woman to serve as a frontline soldier in the First World War. In 1914, together with numerous other women, she went to Serbia with a St. John’s Ambulance unit. As the retreat got under way, she was enrolled in the Serbian army. The Serbian House exhibition contains a photograph of her, with others, on Corfu. In 1916 she published An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army, to help raise funds for the army. She was seriously wounded by a grenade during hand-to-hand combat against the Bulgarians defending Bitola, in Macedonia. She was the first ever woman to be made a commissioned officer in the Serbian army, and was awarded Serbia’s highest military decoration, the Karadjordje Star.

Flora Sandes, in Serbian Army uniform

Flora Sandes is one of several extraordinary British women in the early decades of the 20th Century, who travelled through some of the remotest, harshest regions of the world. Among the others were Edith Durham, who travelled through Albania and other regions of the Balkans, and became a heroine of the Albanian national cause during the First World War; Gertrude Bell, whose unmatched experience and knowledge of the Middle East prompted the British foreign policy establishment to overlook her sex and take her on and make use of her expertise; and Rebecca West, who achieved celebrity status, among other achievements, for her accounts of her travels through Yugoslavia. Their experiences and achievements were remarkable by any standards. But for women, in the conservative, misogynist environments of those places and those times, what they did was heroic beyond anything that any man of their times accomplished.

In the Doge's Palace: the glory and infamy of Venice

Walking through the Doge’s Palace in Venice, one marvels not only at the splendour of the Most Serene Republic, but at the sense of timelessness of a city whose greatness evaporated so suddenly, but left its monuments, its grandeur, its buildings in place, frozen in time, like an entire city transformed into a museum. Venice was not just an architectural, artistic and cultural marvel. It was the capital of an empire, at its height the greatest trading and naval power in the Mediterranean. It was well past the prime of its political power when revolutionary France kicked down the door in 1797. The republic which had survived untrammelled through a millennium of turmoil in Europe was gone, just like that. Perhaps the most poignant reminder of the suddenness of its demise is the coat of arms of the last Doge, the head of state of the republic, in the Shield Room, where the Doge held official receptions. On the wall in that room had been displayed the coat of arms of each Doge for the duration of his office. Since his exit, the arms of the last Doge, Lodovico Manin, have remained there, a sad memorial to a lost world, preserved now only as empty rooms, filled with fine artworks, but dead and gone.

Great Council chamber, Doge's Palace

I was especially struck by a series of paintings along one wall in the Great Council chamber, where the nobles of Venice once met to discuss the affairs of the republic. The paintings portray key events of the Fourth Crusade, at the beginning of the 13th Century, one of the most notable and most controversial episodes for the Republic. One of the paintings shows the conquest of Zadar, then the most important city on the Dalmatian coast. Zadar (Zara in Italian) had passed to Hungarian control a few years earlier, and Venice was determined to get it back. The Fourth Crusade presented an opportunity for the elderly Doge Enrico Dandolo. Venice had agreed to hire out ships to transport the French crusaders to the Holy Land. However, the French could not afford to pay. So the wily Venetians proposed that, in lieu of payment, the French could help them capture Zadar. The result was the sacking of the city in 1202. In Zadar, this is still seen as an infamous event. When he heard of it, Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Crusade’s participants, although he later partially relented, restricting the ban to the Venetians only. Yet here, in the Doge’s Palace, the conquest of Zadar is presented as a heroic and glorious event.

Other paintings celebrate the conquest of Constantinople and the coronation of a Venetian puppet, Baldwin of Flanders and Hainault, as the new eastern Emperor. The rapaciousness of the crusaders as they smashed, looted and murdered their way through the city in 1204 made this one of the most notorious events in European history. Its legacy is still felt in the bitterness of many Orthodox Christians towards the West. The Venetian army fully participated in the capture of the town, and they shared in its plunder. Among numerous artistic works carted off back to Venice were the four great bronze horses, which dated from antiquity and had stood in the hippodrome for centuries, and which were placed above the entrance to St. Mark’s Basilica (they were replaced by replicas in the 1980s). Crusaders, who had taken an oath on the cross, desecrated the great Basilica of Hagia Sophia, raped nuns, and smashed holy icons and relics in a wanton frenzy of destruction.

The destruction wrought by the Crusaders in Constantinople had longer term consequences than the devastation of the great city. Byzantium was left withered and territorially truncated, an enfeeblement that left it unable to withstand the later Ottoman onslaught. But from the battering of Constantinople it was Venice that emerged as the greatest immediate winner. With the help of the Crusaders, Venice recaptured Zadar; humbled Byzantium; acquired key strategic territories in the eastern Mediterranean; excluded rivals Genoa and Pisa from trade in the reduced Byzantine Empire; and deflected the Crusaders from their initial goal of attacking Egypt, with which Venice was negotiating a trade deal. As depicted in the painting in the Great Council chamber, for Venice it was a triumph. And yet as I looked at the paintings, I was most struck by how such events, regarded in the Eastern Orthodox world as infamous and shameful, were here celebrated as glorious.