Angelokastro: A Byzantine Fortress on Corfu, Greece
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Greece
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Byzantine
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page14 sections
History
Angelokastro is a Byzantine fortress on Corfu, Greece, built during the Byzantine period on a rocky summit above the island’s northwestern coast. Its construction date remains uncertain, with proposed connections to the reigns of Manuel I Komnenos, Michael I Komnenos Doukas, and Michael II Angelos. Finds from the site also indicate occupation, and perhaps fortification, during the early Byzantine period between the fifth and seventh centuries.
Byzantine and Angevin rule
Angelokastro developed on a frontier exposed to conflict after Byzantium lost southern Italy in 1071. Corfu then faced invasions from the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Following the Crusader capture of Constantinople in 1204, the island passed among several rulers, including the Despotate of Epirus, a medieval Byzantine Greek successor state. Bohemund of Taranto controlled Corfu from 1081 to 1085, after which Byzantine authority returned until the Angevin takeover in 1267.
The earliest surviving documentary reference to the fortress dates from 1272, when Giordano di San Felice took possession of it for Charles I of Naples. The Angevins, the dynasty ruling Naples, held Corfu and Angelokastro from 1267 to 1386. After a brief resistance by a garrison loyal to Ladislaus of Naples, control passed to the Republic of Venice in 1386 with virtually no loss of life.
Venetian capital and defensive centre
Angelokastro remained under Venetian rule until 1797. From 1387 to the end of the sixteenth century, it served as the official capital of Corfu. In the early sixteenth century, it became the seat of the Venetian governor responsible for the Ionian Islands and commander of the fleet stationed at Corfu. The castle’s military governor, or castellan, was initially appointed by Venetian officials. Later, the city of Corfu secured the right to choose him from among the island’s nobles.
The fortress formed part of a defensive triangle with Gardiki Castle in southern Corfu and Kassiopi Castle in the northeast. Together, these strongholds protected the island’s southern, northwestern, and northeastern approaches. Angelokastro also monitored shipping routes in the southern Adriatic and Ionian seas. Signals and signal fires could warn Corfu City of approaching enemies, while the fortress sheltered local inhabitants, peasants, and livestock during attacks.
Villagers took an active part in the castle’s defence. Venetian policy sometimes provided funds to repair and maintain rural fortresses so that they could protect the population during periods of crisis. Angelokastro resisted repeated sieges, pirate attacks, and Ottoman invasions, and it never fell to an attacking force.
Sieges and military resistance
In 1403, a Genoese force of about 10,000 mercenaries led by the French marshal Jean Le Maingre, known as Boucicault, landed at Palaiokastritsa while travelling toward the Holy Land. After burning and pillaging the surrounding area, the force besieged Angelokastro for about a year. The Corfiot garrison eventually repulsed the attackers.
Angelokastro helped repel three major Ottoman attacks on Corfu. During the first great siege in 1537, about 25,000 Ottoman troops under the admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa invaded the island. Approximately 3,000 villagers took refuge inside the fortress, where the garrison repulsed four attacks. Around 20,000 people who could not reach either of Corfu’s major fortresses were killed or enslaved.
In 1571, the Ottoman admiral Kilich Ali Pasha directed roughly two-thirds of his invasion force against Angelokastro. The defending garrison included about 4,000 peasants from nearby villages and successfully resisted the assault. After the Ottoman army withdrew and tried to cross the mountains toward Corfu City, the garrison sallied from the fortress and rolled boulders onto the troops. The attack disrupted the movement of the Ottoman force, which then abandoned its attempt to conquer Corfu.
During the second great siege of Corfu in 1716, Angelokastro stood outside the principal fighting but again offered protection to people from the surrounding area. Its importance therefore extended beyond the permanent garrison. The fortress served as a refuge for the local population during invasions and as a base from which the island’s defenders could obstruct enemy movements.
Decline and archaeological work
When the Venetian Republic fell to Napoleon’s armies in 1797, Angelokastro passed to the French. For a time, the fortress functioned as an observation post and a station for signalling to ships. After the Napoleonic Wars, Corfu became part of the British-protected Ionian Islands. Angelokastro then lost its strategic and defensive functions, was abandoned, and gradually became ruinous.
Control of Corfu and the fortress passed through several political phases, including the Septinsular Republic from 1800 to 1807 and the United States of the Ionian Islands from 1815 to 1864. Corfu became part of Greece around 1864. In 1999, excavations by Greece’s 8th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities uncovered two Early Christian closure slabs and other finds on the acropolis. These discoveries indicate early occupation and possibly an early fortification on the hill. A programme of restoration, excavation, and reconstruction also began in 1999 under the Greek Ministry of Culture and the European Union.
Remains
Summit fortress and defensive works
Angelokastro occupies the highest point of Corfu’s northwestern shoreline, near Palaiokastritsa, on a rocky summit about 305 metres above the sea. The citadel overlooks Corfu City and the mountains of mainland Greece to the southeast, as well as broad areas of Corfu to the northeast and northwest. Its position is particularly precipitous. Steep ground protects the western, northwestern, and southern sides, while the fortifications incorporate the natural rock formations around them.
Acropolis
The acropolis occupies the highest part of the fortress. The surviving walls are in ruins and were constructed from hewn stone, including regularly cut ashlar blocks. The castle’s foundation may be Byzantine, but its use of the surrounding cliffs and rock formations does not appear to follow a purely typical Byzantine fortification pattern. Frankish or southern Italian influence may also have shaped its architectural character, although the ruinous condition makes the details difficult to establish.
Gates, towers, and water supply
The principal gate lies on the northern side and is protected by a circular tower. Ruins opposite the entrance formed the garrison quarters. Three underground cisterns, tanks used to collect and store water, supplied the occupants of the castle. A smaller gate opened on the southern side. Battlements survive along the northeastern side, preserving part of the fortress’s defensive edge.
Religious and funerary features
Church of the Archangel Michael
The Church of the Archangel Michael stands on the southern side of the acropolis. It was built on the site of an Early Christian three-aisled church. The church therefore occupies a location with religious use reaching back to the early Christian period, when the earlier building formed part of the settlement or fortified summit.
Saint Kyriaki Chapel
A tiny chapel dedicated to Saint Kyriaki occupies the eastern side of the castle. Cut directly into the rock, it has a cave-like form and also served as a hermitage. A hermit lived in the same area. Paintings inside the chapel date from the eighteenth century, linking the surviving interior decoration to the fortress’s later period under Venetian rule.
Rock-cut cemetery
Seven graves lie in a cemetery on the western side of the fortress. Cut into the rock, they have anthropomorphic forms that follow the outline of the human body and resemble sarcophagi. Their origin remains undetermined.
Early occupation and surrounding settlement
The Early Christian closure slabs and other finds recovered on the acropolis in 1999 provide physical evidence for activity on the summit during the early Byzantine period. The discoveries point to occupation between the fifth and seventh centuries and may also indicate that the hill was fortified during that era.
Byzantine ruins at nearby Patima indicate a settlement whose inhabitants may have used the fortifications on the Angelokastro hill when danger threatened. This relationship connects the summit stronghold with the wider inhabited landscape, while the castle’s surviving walls preserve the later defensive complex in a fragmentary condition.
The nineteenth-century French scholar Jean Alexandre Buchon considered the walls to have been built hastily. The site was also represented in a drawing by Edward Lear for his series Views of the Ionian Islands, providing a visual record from the period when Angelokastro had already lost its military role.
