Achilleion is a palace built in Corfu by Empress of Austria Elisabeth of Bavaria
Empress of Austria Elisabeth of Bavaria, also known as was a woman obsessed with beauty, and very powerful, but tragically vulnerable since the loss of her only son, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in the Mayerling Incident in 1889. A year later in 1890, she built a summer palace in the region of Gastouri now the municipality of Achilleion, about ten kilometres to the south of the city of Corfu. The palace was designed with the mythical hero Achilles as its central theme. Elisabeth spoke Greek better than any of the Greek queens that were her contemporaries and she expressed a desire to further immerse herself in the Greek culture. Like every other European royal, she had some Byzantine emperors among her distant ancestors. Elisabeth was given the property by Corfiot Petros Vrailas show her gratitude, Elisabeth rewarded Vrailas Armenis with a large diamond-encrusted brooch to be passed down to the wife of the eldest son. The palace was designed by Italian architect Raffaele Caritto. Ernst Herter, a famous German sculptor, was commissioned to create works inspired from Greek mythology. His famous sculpture Dying Achilles created in Berlin in 1884 as inscribed in the statue, forms the centrepiece of the Achilleion palace, with the classic Greek statues that surround it, is a monument to platonic romanticism as well as escapism and was, naturally, named after place abounds with paintings and statues of Achilles, both in the main hall and in the lavish gardens depicting the heroic and tragic scenes of the Trojan war. The architectural style is Pompeian and has many parallels to that of the Russian imperial residence in Crimea. The Imperial gardens on top of the hill provide a majestic view of the surrounding green hill crests and valleys as the Ionian sea gleams in the background. Elisabeth used to visit the place often until 1898 when she was assassinated in Geneva by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni.
Size: 7776px × 1920px
Location: Achílleio, Corfu, Greece
Photo credit: © Brenda Kean / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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