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A refuge
Empress Elisabeth built the palace as a refuge after her son's loss
Elisabeth was deeply saddened by the loss of her only son, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, in 1889. A year later she had a summer palace built on Corfu as a refuge. It stands at Gastouri, about ten kilometres south of the city of Corfu.
The style
It was designed as an ancient Phaeacian palace and named for Achilles
The Italian architect Raffaele Caritto designed it to suggest an ancient palace of mythical Phaeacia. It is named after the hero Achilles, and paintings and statues of him fill the main hall and the gardens.
Private use
She used it as a private palace and received only her daughters
Elisabeth used the Achilleion only as a private palace, as a refuge from the world and her past. She received only her daughters, Archduchess Marie Valerie and Archduchess Gisela, with their husbands. Her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph, did not like sea voyages and never saw the palace.
The Kaiser
Kaiser Wilhelm II bought it in 1907 and made it a diplomatic hub
German Kaiser Wilhelm II bought the Achilleion in 1907 and used it as a summer residence. His visits made it a hub of European diplomacy. He commissioned his own Achilles statue from Johannes Götz, a bronze that stands as guardian of the gardens, facing north toward the city.
“To the Greatest Greek from the Greatest German”
Inscription at the base of the Kaiser's Achilles, later removed
The wars
In World War I it was a hospital, and later it housed an orphanage
During World War I the palace was a military hospital for French and Serbian troops. From about 1921 to 1924 it housed an orphanage for Armenian orphans from Constantinople. During World War II the Axis powers used it as military headquarters.
Day 2, afternoon
It comes after Palaiopolis Beach.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Achilleion (Corfu), and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.