Sundays are made for relaxing. But when in Corfu, Sundays are made for exploring.Every weekend, I try to forget my days in the office and plan interesting excursions with my friends. Besides, in Corfu we can choose to visit a variety of places, according to our tastes, on foot or by car or bicycle; its crystalline waters, its picturesque seafront towns and villages, its hidden beaches and caves, its cosmopolitan resorts will leave you mesmerised. This time we decided to visit the old Peritheia which is actually a ghost village located in the foothills of Mount Pantokratoras.
We are lucky because we have our own car so we choose to leave early in the morning because later the heat would be really unbearable. We take the Ethnikis Palaiokastritsas road until we reach the village of Loutses. From this point the road is quite dangerous; twisting and narrow. Just a few meters away, we see the old Peritheia and the time seems to have stopped back in the Venetian rule of Corfu. Although the village was originally established in the 14th century, during the Byzantine times, it grew and prospered during the Venetian rule due to the need of people to move from the coastal side and protect themselves from pirate and enemy attacks. Its fine Venetian architecture is still all around; in each and every beautiful house and estate. However, when piracy was confronted from the Mediterranean Sea in the late 19th century, some inhabitants started to gradually move to the coasts until the 60s when very few, mostly older, were left to take care of the crops and to keep alive Old Peritheia’s history.
Source: CorfuDiary.Com
