Loyusa

Above Loutsa beach, on the north-eastern flank of the entrance to Vathy bay, two iron cannons sit on what look like makeshift bases. In fact they are the remnants of a small bastion, part of a French fort built between 1807 and 1815, when the Ionian Islands lay under French control. The position commands the mouth of the bay and the open sea beyond. The guns themselves are older and Venetian by origin. One, cast in Venice and bearing the Lion of St Mark, dates from between 1723 and 1745. The other carries the Tudor rose and was made in England: it came from the warship Restoration, which sank off Livorno in 1711. In 1715, scrambling to arm against an unexpectedly powerful Ottoman fleet, the Venetians raised 24 of her 70 cannons from the seabed. After the Seventh Venetian-Turkish War (1714-1718) forced them out of the Morea, they distributed surplus guns among Ionian fortresses. Two more of the Restoration's cannons survive at Lefkada, outside the castle of Agia Mavra.