Corfu and its alternative museums
Corfu,beyond its incomparable natural beauty, is a dynamic cultural destination with many temporal world heritage monuments
The Capodistrias Museum
The Capodistrias Museum is the only museum dedicated to the life, work and legacy of Count Ioannis Capodistrias, the great Corfiot diplomat, politician and first Governor of Greece. The Museum offers to its visitors a unique opportunity to become acquainted with the history of Corfu, 19th century Europe and Greece. The Museum is housed in the family’s rural estate in Koukouritsa, surrounded by a beautiful garden that offers the most amazing views.
Capodistrias Museum offers its visitors the opportunity to see:
The country home of the Capodistrias Family
Personal items of Ioannis Capodistrias, along with books, maps, etc.
Honorary gifts given to the Governor, such as medals, religious icons, and items from his time in the Court of Czar Alexander I
Works of art, furniture and household items of the Governor and his family
The rich digital archive gathering evidence concerning Capodistrias’s life and work, by accessing historical documents from throughout Europe.
Museum of Asian Art
The Corfu Museum of Asian Art is the only museum in Greece exclusively dedicated to Far Eastern and Indian art and antiquity. The museum is housed in the Palace of Sts Michael and George.
The neoclassical, Georgian-style building is constructed in Maltese limestone and was built in the 19th century during the Ionian Islands British occupation. In 1864, following the Ionian Islands’ reunification with Greece, it became property of the Greek state, and since 1928 it houses the Museum of Asian Art.
The Palace is a three-floor building and the main entrance leads directly to the ground floor, where four halls are open to the public, the three used for the Museum’s temporary exhibitions and the fourth room, the Ionian Senate Conference Hall. The permanent galleries of the museum are found in the two first floor wings. In the east wing, also called the Gregorios Manos wing, part of the Museum’s Chinese collection is on display, while in the west wing, known as N. Hadjivassiliou wing, artefacts from India and its wider surrounding area, as well as from Japan are exhibited.
Sea Shell Museum
The Sea Shell Museum of Corfu is situated in Benitses, one of the most famous, seaside resorts of the island.
In its halls, the visitors have the opportunity to admire a series of creatures but, also… secrets of the deep of the sea, not only of the Ionian and the Mediterranean but, also of the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The founder of the Sea Shell Museum, the diver and collector Napoleontas Sagias, is the person responsible for the richness of its exhibits which have been recorded more than 10,000!
Conches, shells, fossils of marine organisms, sponges, corals, embalmed fish, lobsters, crabs, snakes, sharks and jaws of sharks, sea urchins are just some of what you will see in the Sea Shell Museum, while among the exhibits a whale skeleton stands out!
The Sea Shell Museum operates since 1989 in a modern building, it has been awarded by the Italian Research Institute I.R.E.D.A., while its collection is continuously enriched.
