Venice, the pearl of Adriatic sea
With its romantic canals, amazing architecture, and great historical relevance, Venice, a charming city on the Adriatic Sea, fascinates visitors. The great center of this…
On Greece’s northwestern coast, where the rugged mountains of Epirus meet the glittering edge of the Ionian Sea, Parga perches like a relic of another time. Not quite island and not entirely mainland in spirit, this town wears its contradictions with grace. Tucked between Preveza to the south and Igoumenitsa to the north, and floating just sixteen miles from Corfu, Parga offers no grand arrivals by ship. It does not erupt into view with ceremony. Rather, it reveals itself slowly—whitewashed and sunwarmed—climbing a green hillside in neat, painted tiers, spilling down to a calm, circular bay like an amphitheater devoted to the sea.
For centuries, the town has borne the title “Bride of Epirus,” and at times, “Bride of the Ionian”—epithets that, while romantic, allude more to geography and endurance than sentimental excess. It is not merely beauty that defines Parga, but the peculiar cohesion of form and function: its amphitheatrical streets, its red-tiled roofs tucked behind one another like folded linen, its defiance of the historical forces that tried to erase it.
From the narrow alleys that wrap through its pedestrian-only Old Town—where the air often carries the scent of pine and sea salt—to the quiet terraces overlooking olive groves that have rooted here since Venetian decree, the town seems to whisper of both survival and solitude. Behind the photogenic serenity lies a rich and often violent history, written in the crumbling mortar of its Venetian castle and the dusty records of exiled families.
Yet Parga was never isolated. Though it stands on the mainland, its pulse was always maritime. The Ionian Sea, in its placid clarity, acted less as a barrier and more as a bridge—linking Parga not only to the nearby islands, but to empires and ambitions as diverse as Venice, France, Russia, Britain, and the Ottomans. This paradox—of a remote, insular town that nonetheless sat at the crossroads of imperial maneuvering—defines Parga’s historical and cultural DNA.
The roots of Parga run deep into the soil of antiquity, long before its name appeared in formal documents. The region once formed part of the domain of the Thesprotians, an ancient Greek tribe who appear frequently in Homeric verse, known for their cordial relations with the kingdom of Ithaca. This connection places the region—if not Parga itself—within the mythic orbit of Odysseus.
The physical evidence of early habitation emerges most vividly in nearby Mycenaean tholos tombs. These circular, beehive-shaped structures—silent and unadorned—suggest that human presence in the area dates back at least to the second millennium BCE. Later, during the waning years of the Hellenistic era, the settlement of Toryne occupied the space now claimed by Parga. The name “Toryne,” derived from the Greek word for ladle, references the shape of the bay—a gentle scoop carved from the coastline. That ancient name has since faded, replaced by “Parga,” a term with likely Slavic origins, first recorded in the year 1318.
By that time, the area had begun to take on the form and identity we now recognize. But medieval Parga, unlike its ancient antecedents, was a pawn on a turbulent board. As the Byzantine Empire weakened, regional rulers jostled for territory, often appealing to powerful outsiders for leverage. In 1320, Nicholas Orsini, Despot of Epirus, tried to cede Parga to the Republic of Venice in exchange for support against the Byzantines. Venice declined. The town, however, would not remain beyond Venetian reach for long.
When Parga finally passed into Venetian control in 1401, it was not simply acquired; it was adopted. The town became an exclave of Corfu, governed by a castellan who administered the town on Venice’s behalf. This arrangement, formalized by the Ottoman-Venetian treaty of 1419, marked the beginning of more than three centuries of Venetian involvement—years that would define Parga’s civic identity, economic orientation, and defensive architecture.
To fortify the settlement, the Venetians collaborated with Normans from Corfu, rebuilding an earlier fortress that had once protected the coast from piracy. The version of the fortress that towers over Parga today contains layers of these interventions—walls raised, towers expanded, and cisterns installed over successive decades. Even the mole forming the present-day harbor was a Venetian project, constructed in 1572 to improve maritime access.
Venetian rule brought stability, but also expectations. The administration imposed a requirement that olive groves be cultivated extensively—an agricultural strategy as much as a defensive one. Groves served not only as economic engines, but as a means of securing the land from abandonment. The olive presses built during this era remain visible today, some preserved as museums, others repurposed, but all hinting at a time when olives were more than a staple—they were Parga’s lifeblood.
Despite intermittent Ottoman raids, particularly in the mid-fifteenth century, Parga remained loyal to Venice. In 1454, the Venetian Senate responded to increased Ottoman pressure by granting the townspeople a decade-long tax exemption—a gesture that underscored both the town’s strategic importance and its precarity. A small Romaniote Jewish community appeared in records from 1496, illustrating the town’s pluralistic complexion under Venetian tolerance.
The sixteenth century brought fresh turmoil. Anti-Ottoman rebels under Emmanuel Mormoris operated from Parga, engaging in skirmishes along the Epirus coast. Throughout this period, Parga faced recurrent conflicts with Margariti, an Ottoman-controlled neighbor. Yet, through siege and skirmish, the town persisted, buoyed by its alignment with Venice and its precarious autonomy as a Christian village in an overwhelmingly Muslim-ruled region.
The fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797 initiated a carousel of foreign occupations. France took control, granting Parga the status of a free city. The French were soon displaced by the Russians, who captured the area in 1799 and incorporated it into the short-lived Ionian Republic. That republic, in turn, yielded to French rule once more following the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807.
This second French administration left its imprint on the landscape. A fortress was constructed on the islet of Panagia, the small rocky protrusion in Parga’s bay, as a precaution against Ottoman aggression. Tensions between France and Ali Pasha of Ioannina simmered during this period, with both sides maneuvering for influence in the region. While French officers considered using their Albanian troops to challenge Ali Pasha on the mainland, their plans never materialized.
Following Napoleon’s downfall in 1815, the British emerged as arbiters of Ionian affairs. At the request of the Parganites, who feared Ali Pasha’s ambitions, Britain was asked to offer protection. Yet, within two years, the British decided to cede Parga to the Ottomans—an act that has endured in local memory as a grievous betrayal. The decision was allegedly justified under the Russo-Turkish Convention of 1800, which stipulated that such territories could be transferred back to Ottoman sovereignty.
For Parga’s people, however, legal arguments were hollow comfort. In 1819, they chose exile over submission. Nearly the entire population—some 4,000 residents—fled to Corfu. In an act of solemn defiance, they disinterred the bones of their ancestors and burned them, carrying the ashes and religious icons across the sea. This was not mere relocation; it was a funeral procession for a homeland they refused to surrender.
Above the evacuated town, the Venetian fortress stood abandoned—its towers empty, its walls echoing with the absence of life. For nearly a century, the citadel watched over a city that no longer belonged to itself. It had passed from hands to hands—Venetian, French, Russian, British, Ottoman—yet never lost the distinctiveness carved into it by geography, climate, and the long-suffering will of its people.
In 1913, following the Balkan Wars and Greece’s successful annexation of Epirus, the exiled Parganites returned. But theirs was not a jubilant homecoming. The fortress had been desecrated. Ali Pasha, during his brief ownership, had installed a harem within the walls. The returning citizens tore it down stone by stone, an act of symbolic purification.
Since then, Parga has never truly bowed to foreign dominion again. It endured the upheavals of the twentieth century, including German occupation during World War II, and slowly reshaped itself not as a battleground, but as a destination. Today, tourism fuels the local economy, and the town’s amphitheatrical layout and shimmering beaches attract visitors seeking something quieter than the more commercialized Greek islands.
But behind the color and the calm lies a city built not just on stone, but on principle—where exile was preferred over surrender, and where the sea has always offered both passage and protection.
Few episodes in Parga’s past are more deeply etched into the town’s identity than the 1819 mass exodus. Betrayed by the British, sold to the Ottoman Empire without their consent, and faced with the prospect of submission to Ali Pasha—whose brutal governance was notorious even in the volatile patchwork of Ottoman Epirus—the residents of Parga made a choice that was both tragic and resolute.
Rather than live under Ottoman dominion, nearly 4,000 inhabitants departed en masse for Corfu. The evacuation was ritualistic and symbolic. On Good Friday, to the tolling of church bells, Pargan families exhumed the remains of their ancestors from the local cemeteries. Bones were cremated, their ashes stored alongside sacred icons and relics, forming a caravan of memory that floated westward across the Ionian Sea. It was not a migration in pursuit of opportunity but a sacrificial retreat—an effort to preserve identity and faith in the face of perceived desecration.
For nearly a century, Parga was a spectral settlement, its Venetian fortress standing in vigil over an emptied harbor and shuttered dwellings. Ali Pasha installed a harem within the castle—an act seen as both a political statement and a personal indulgence. This affront only deepened the bitterness felt by those in exile.
When Greece achieved victory in the Balkan Wars and Parga was formally incorporated into the modern Greek state in 1913, the descendants of those original Parganites returned. Their return was marked not by triumph but by a quiet, arduous reckoning with the scars of betrayal. The fortress had been profaned; stones were removed by returning citizens in a symbolic effort to erase the memory of Ottoman occupancy. And yet, the structure remained—ruined, weatherworn, but still asserting its place above the bay.
Modern Parga clings to its steep terrain like ivy. The town spills amphitheatrically from the Venetian castle down to the sea, its tiered arrangement of red-tiled roofs and pastel façades echoing a Mediterranean vernacular more commonly associated with the Greek islands. And yet, it is unmistakably of the mainland—accessible by road, bound by mountain and sea, rooted in a complex history distinct from the Cycladic ideal.
What distinguishes Parga’s urban character is not simply its architecture, though the aesthetic is striking. It is the way that space is used and shaped—narrow passageways flanked by stone walls, stair-stepped alleys where the scent of oregano drifts from kitchen windows, plazas shaded by old trees where elders speak in low voices over bitter coffee. The town resists sprawl; its geography prevents it. Everything bends and ascends and returns.
At the heart of the Old Town is a pedestrian zone where automobiles are unwelcome and unnecessary. Visitors arriving by car must leave their vehicles in designated parking areas and continue on foot. This enforced deceleration invites immersion. The only appropriate pace in Parga is a human one—measured, observant, unhurried.
Despite its modest population, Parga receives a substantial number of seasonal visitors. Tourism is now the primary economic engine, but unlike many other coastal settlements reshaped entirely by visitor demand, Parga has retained a sense of continuity. The olive groves still define the land as much as the sea does. Cultivation of the olive—introduced and mandated during Venetian rule—remains a livelihood for many. Generational knowledge, in this case, was never lost to exile or disinterest.
The Venetian Castle remains the most commanding landmark in Parga. Approached by foot via a winding, cobbled path lined with bougainvillea and the occasional cat, the fortress today is a hollowed monument—stone and sky, arch and echo. Its original structure dates to the Norman period, with major reconstructions carried out by the Venetians in the 15th and 16th centuries. Cannon embrasures still point toward the horizon. Moss clings to fractured battlements. The air smells of sea salt and thyme.
From its ramparts, the entirety of the town unfolds below—whitewashed walls, tiled roofs, the glint of moored fishing boats, and beyond them, the Ionian Sea stretching toward Corfu. This vantage reveals what the Venetians once knew: Parga was not just a local stronghold. It was a strategic node in a contested frontier between empires, religions, and trade routes.
Far older than the fortress, however, is the archaeological record that surrounds Parga. Mycenaean tholos tombs—beehive-shaped burial chambers carved into the rock—testify to habitation here since at least the second millennium BCE. The Thesprotians, one of the ancient Greek tribes frequently referenced by Homer, once called this coast home. Their interactions with Ithaca and Odysseus are recorded in epic verse, albeit with more poetic license than empirical detail.
Toryne, the Hellenistic town that once occupied this site, derived its name from the Greek word for ladle—apparently inspired by the curved shape of the beach. While little remains of Toryne in visible ruins, its name survives in texts and local memory, forming yet another layer in Parga’s stratigraphy of identity.
Among Parga’s most controversial figures is Ibrahim Pasha—a man born to a Greek Orthodox family in Parga, captured as a child, and eventually elevated to the second highest position in the Ottoman Empire. His early life reads like a fable recounted in a Byzantine court: the son of a fisherman, likely speaking a Slavic dialect, abducted in wartime, educated in Manisa, and eventually befriended by a young prince named Suleiman.
That prince became Suleiman the Magnificent. Ibrahim became his Grand Vizier.
Ibrahim Pasha’s legacy in Turkey is one of considerable distinction. A patron of the arts and diplomacy, he negotiated trade agreements with Catholic Europe, introduced administrative reforms in Egypt, and served as a key architect of Ottoman foreign policy. Venetian diplomats dubbed him “Ibrahim the Magnificent.” He mastered at least five languages and was known for his musical talent and philosophical interests.
But in Parga, his memory is complex—if acknowledged at all. While Turkish historians view him as a figure of cultural synthesis and imperial prowess, his contributions to the Ottoman military and his conversion to Islam obscure any local pride in his origins. The only trace of his connection to Parga may be found in the Ottoman registry books. Even his return—he did, by most accounts, bring his parents to Istanbul—was personal, not public.
His downfall, however, was dramatic. Strangled in 1536 on the orders of the very Sultan who had once considered him a brother, Ibrahim’s demise was a result of court intrigue, jealousy, and the inseparable tension between proximity to power and the paranoia it breeds. His death left no monument in Parga—only a cautionary tale of ambition and impermanence.
By contrast, the legacy of Ali Pasha of Ioannina is harder to ignore. A far more direct antagonist in Parga’s historical drama, Ali Pasha’s efforts to dominate the region defined the political landscape of western Greece in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Known for his ruthlessness and cunning, he was both feared and begrudgingly admired.
Ali Pasha’s role in Parga’s history culminated in the town’s forced cession by the British and the subsequent exile of its population. But he had cast a longer shadow prior to that event. Diplomatic ties with Napoleon Bonaparte and intermittent negotiations with the British show his deftness in manipulating European power dynamics. He was a despot in the classical sense—violent, unpredictable, but undeniably effective.
His interactions with the English poet Lord Byron in 1809 brought him to Western literary consciousness. Byron recorded conflicting impressions: awe at Ali’s wealth, horror at his cruelty. Their exchanges are emblematic of the duality of Ottoman Epirus—flamboyant and brutal, exoticized and feared.
Today, Parga is less a repository of ruins than a living palimpsest. Its beaches—Valtos, Kryoneri, Lichnos—draw summer crowds, their waters reflecting the same Ionian blue that once ferried Venetian traders and fleeing townsfolk alike. But its heart is inland, in the olive groves, the tavernas with handwritten menus, the elderly locals who still recount stories that bend chronology and memory.
Tourism may be the economic lifeblood, but heritage remains the soul. Local festivals blend religious rite with civic pride. Church bells still toll in the evening. Icons rescued during the 1819 flight to Corfu have, in some cases, returned home.
Walking through Parga today is to step through time gently—not to be overwhelmed by it. Its streets do not insist upon their history, but neither do they hide it. The fortress remains open, its stones warm in the sun. The sea continues its soft assault on the mole built by Venetians. And the people—descendants of those who left and returned—go on living within view of both mountain and horizon.
In the end, Parga endures not because of its postcard beauty or even its strategic geography, but because it has learned to remember without bitterness. The town has absorbed its contradictions—Venetian walls, Ottoman ghosts, Greek resilience—and allowed them to shape a place that feels not suspended in time, but deeply rooted in it.
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