Mon Repos Palace was built in 1826 by the British Commissioner Frederick Adams as a gift to his second wife, the Corfiot Nina Palatianou. The neoclassical villa  was built in 1828  to a design by the architect Sir George Whitmore, the same man who designed the Palace of St. Michael and St. George on Spianada Square in Corfu Town (now the Museum of Asian Art). It is a small but very beautiful palace with elements of colonial architecture. However, the family did not enjoy the pleasures of a beautiful home for long. Frederick was sent by Great Britain to serve in India.

The palace became the summer residence of all former British governors of Corfu.

In this house, as they say, on the dining table, on June 10, 1921, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain (he died this year).

In 1833, a school of fine arts operated there, and in 1834 the park itself was opened to the public.

The villa’s first royal resident was Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire , who stayed there in 1863. She enjoyed her stay on the island so much that she later built her own residence , Achillion Palace , near the village of Gastouri, about 7 km south of the villa. 

After the union of the Ionian Islands with Greece in 1864, the villa became the summer residence of King George I of Greece. It was he who gave the villa the name MON REPOS (from the French “My Rest”).

During World War II, when the Italians occupied Corfu, this palace became the residence of Parini, the Italian governor of the Ionian Islands.

After the war, the Greek royal family used it as a summer residence until 1967, when King Constantine II fled the country. For a while, the villa stood abandoned. .

For many decades, the Greek government and the former Greek royal families disputed ownership of the palace. The former King of Greece, Constantine, claimed that Mon Repos was his property, as it was his summer residence. However, the Greek government (after Greece became a republic) did not accept this claim, saying that the residence belonged to the Greek state. The villa was confiscated a few years after the proclamation of the Hellenic Republic.

A case was filed with the European Court of Human Rights regarding the confiscation of the villa and other property of King Constantine II.

Finally, in 2002, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg awarded the former king €7 million in compensation for the real estate he lost when the monarchy was abolished in Greece in 1975.

***

A birth certificate for Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, was recently  discovered in the archives of the Corfu Town  Municipality. The certificate was written in the official Greek language of the time, which is more reminiscent  of ancient Greek  than spoken Greek.