RATHER THAN TRYING to rake, in cartographic terms, the already well-tilled ground of mainland Greece or the islands of Crete and Cyprus, it seemed to me that the northern island of Corfu (as I shall call it rather than by its official Greek name Kérkira), although much visited by tourists from Britain and from other countries, has been somewhat overlooked by map collectors and cartographic historians.[1]

Of all the Greek islands, none has such a polyglot history of sovereignty. Corfu has been under the lordship or rule of the Corinthians, Athenians, Syracusians, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Venetians, French, Russians and English before being united finally with Greece in 1864. Unlike most of the Balkans and the Aegean, Corfu was never subjected to Ottoman rule in spite of being fiercely attacked in 1537, 1571 and again in the eighteenth century. In legendary times the famous Odysseus is supposed to have been washed ashore in a rocky cove just south of present-day Paleokastritsa on the western part of the island. There is still much dispute about just where this cove was located and in spite of diligent enquiry I regrettably have not come across any true Homeric map to help decide the issue. Where did Odysseus land? What charts might he and his contemporaries have used? I will leave these interesting questions to classical students for their reconstruction and debate.

Moving rapidly over the next 2000 years, it can be seen that Corfu was an important port of call on the celebrated holiday package of the Middle Ages – the journey from Venice to the Holy Land for devotional purposes, or to Constantinople and beyond. Did Marco Polo call en route at Corfu? It is not known for certain but in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, there is a fanciful manuscript picture of him, his father, and his uncle, leaving Venice in 1271. And, a little out of chronological sequence, it is interesting to note that the textual panel of G.A. Vavassore's unique map of the Adriatic and eastern Mediterranean (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 1539-41) specifically says that it is intended for sailors travelling between Venice and Constantinople and between Venice and Syria. This map is unusual in that the two halves forming the whole are each quite differently oriented, but Corfu was clearly on the direct route down the Adriatic.[2]

Possibly the first separate maps of Corfu are those which accompanied one of the manuscripts of the Liber Insularum Arcipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti.[3] The original was completed in 1420, and the existence of more than sixty manuscript versions is an indicator of its popularity. The map of Corfu is well defined topographically, with two prominent features which reappear on later maps. These are the main citadel (labelled Corfu) on the east coast, and on the west side the Castello St Angelo which had been built by the Venetians in the previous century. The map's inversion with south at the top, reflected the way the island was seen from the traditional point of departure, Venice.[4] Although never printed, Buondelmonti's work inaugurated a long tradition of island books or isolarii. Among these were those by Henricus Martellus (c.1470), Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti (1485), Benedetto Bordone (1528) and Tommaso Porcacchi (1572). There was also Piri Re'is' Kitab-i-bahriye, a book of nautical instructions in Turkish covering the whole of the Mediterranean and among the 215 detailed sea charts in Re'is' work is one of Corfu.