Antirrio Fortress

The fortress of Antirrio stands on the northern shore of the narrow strait opposite Rio, now overshadowed by the modern bridge that has replaced the old ferry harbour at its feet. Its story begins in 1499, when Sultan Bayezid II, recognising the strategic importance of the passage during the first year of the Venetian-Turkish war, raised forts on both capes, building on ancient foundations. The channel became known in the seventeenth century as the Dardanelles of Nafpaktos, with Antirrio itself called the Castle of Roumeli. Its history is a cycle of destruction and rebuilding: blown up by the Ottomans in 1532 to deny it to Andrea Doria, refortified the following year with artillery from Nafpaktos, damaged by the Knights of Malta in 1603, and later redesigned by Venetian engineers during the Second Venetian Occupation, until ceded back in 1699 and finally surrendered to the Greeks in 1829.

The present form is essentially Venetian, a sea-front fortress of almost hexagonal plan with polygonal bulwarks, surrounded by water on three sides and cut off from the mainland by a flooded trench. The surviving walls, with their rectilinear concrete faces, ramparts and cannon loops, retain a distinctive semi-circular cordone along the parapet base. Seventeenth-century sources describe over eighty-nine houses within, a mosque from Bayezid's time, a domeless prayer house from Suleyman's reign, and a Turkish bath. Restored by the Ministry of Culture, it now hosts summer events.