She learned the national language with ease, and out of sheer enthusiasm for Greece, she had an anchor tattooed on her shoulder: Empress Elisabeth, Austria’s idol, has left her mark on the island of Corfu to this day. An exploration.
Of
Christiane Schloezer, Gastouri
Two cypresses flank the columned entrance, they have grown up over the roof of the white fairytale castle, but the sea shimmers blue-silver as ever from the depths. When the Austrian Empress Sisi stood on the balcony of her Greek dream house in Corfu, a new world opened up to her and she enthused about her “home of the future”. Far away from the strict court ceremonies, the empress from Vienna lived out her fantasies in Hellas. She even wished “that I should be buried here if I don’t even drown in the sea … and the cypresses will sigh enough around me, more than men ever want to do.”