Volunteers clean up Villa Rosa garden

The wonderful mansion with its distinct architecture has been choked by climbing plants. The voluntary group All Together for Corfu led by Spyros Neratzis are the only ones who have voluntarily taken on the cleaning up of the gardens. Just as on other occasions in the past the group took the initiative this weekend and got to work on the neglected garden. It is important that the waste doesn't end up in the landfill or at the side of some road as is the normal way of doing things in Greece and a shredder machine was brought in to break the waste down into pellets.



The once pretty tennis court is overgrown with grass and the large garden once famous for its wonderful variety of flowers is nowadays neglected and completely uncultivated.

The mansion was named after a distinguished Corfu family, pioneers in the arts and tourism, and in turn gave its name to the Villa Rosa district next to San Rocco in Corfu Town.

It was built in 1864 by Gerasimos Aspiotis, son of the Corfu icon painter Nikolaos Aspiotis, on a plot of land he had bought.



The legendary Villa Rosa has its own special history - always brightly lit and full of people at the countless events which were famous in Corfu society. Kings, princes, politicians, intellectuals and other European personalities were all guests here.

Nowadays it is just a neglected mansion with 24 rooms that haven't been cared for in many years. All the splendour it once had is but a distant memory. The last member of the family to live there was Marie Aspioti.





In 1997 it passed into the hands of the Hellenic Public Real Estate Company who gave it to Corfu Prefecture. Since then the planned restoration of the building has been tied up in a bureaucratic labyrinth. In recent years it got to the stage of carrying out a study and Regional Governor Theodoros Galiatsatos signed a request for funding to save this iconic building once the restoration study was approved by the Modern Heritage Sites committee.