Palace of Agion Michael and George

The Palace of Agion Michael and George is a palace in the city of Corfu at the homonymous island. His second name is Old Palace.

The palace was built for Sir Thomas Maitland, the British High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. It was used as the residence of the High Commissioner but was also used as the seat of the Ionian Senate and the Order of Saints Michael and George. The foundation stone was laid on the ground on St. George’s Day in 1819. The location that was built in the Palace is between the old town hall of Corfu and the Venetian castle.

After the union of the Ionian Islands with the Kingdom of Greece in 1864 the palace served as a royal residence until the Second World War. It was not affected by the Italian bombardment of Corfu during Corfu’s incidents. He suffered the greatest damage from his use as a temporary shelter of refugees from Epirus during the Greek Civil War. The Greek state was able to restore the interior of the palace in 1954 with the help of a private trust organized by Sir Charles Peake, the then British Ambassador to Greece. Until 1967, the King of Greece occasionally used the palace for state obligations, while he lived in a nearby villa, Mon Repos.

Today the palace houses the Asian Art Museum of Corfu. The collection of the museum began to gather in 1927 and consists mainly of donations, with the largest of Grigorios Manos with 10,500 pieces.

The palace is designed in Regency style by British architect George Whitmore, who was a Colonel and later Major to the Royal Engineers. It was mainly built with white stone of Malta. The two gates that surround the palace are St. Michael’s Gate and St. George’s Gate. The Official Rooms consist of a majestic staircase, a rotunda in the center leading to two large halls, the Throne Hall and the official dining room. The palace was renovated for the European Union Summit in 1994