{"id":8312,"date":"2016-01-30T00:16:33","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T00:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atcorfu.com\/?p=8312"},"modified":"2024-01-09T20:25:30","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T20:25:30","slug":"the-house-at-san-stefano-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atcorfu.com\/the-house-at-san-stefano-estate\/","title":{"rendered":"San Stefano Estate: Venetian Manor in Benitses"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span> Last updated on January 9th, 2024 at 08:25 pm <\/p>

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The house of San Stefano was built on the hill just north of Benitses, in 1782, by a member of the great Venetian Giustiniani family, on the site of an older house destroyed by an earthquake- so the new manor was built on a rock!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The house was the center of a large estate and took its name from the private chapel of San Stefano, which is built on the same rock as the manor.<\/p>\n

San Stefano and the farm passed by marriage into the Flamburiari family, and more recently was given as a dowry when Lily Flamburiari (the current owners’ grandmother) married Petros Manessis.<\/p>\n

It has a unique place in the History of Corfu<\/a> as the visitors’ books show.<\/p>\n

Amongst them was Elizabeth of Austria and Kaiser Wilhelm 2nd, a photo on the landing is a gift from Queen Alexandra.<\/p>\n

More recently Vivien Leigh, Roger Furse, Gerald Durrell, and notables in many fields have enjoyed a drink on the balcony whilst watching the sunset.<\/p>\n

British High Commissioner Sir Frederick Adam<\/a> stayed in the house while supervising the construction of the waterworks which finally supplied Corfu Town with mains water (around 1850).<\/p>\n

The furniture shows the family links with Venice, Greece, England, and India (where Lily Flamburiari was born in 1896).<\/p>\n

The present generation has a cosmopolitan inheritance on both sides, as Petros Manessis mother Sofia was the daughter of a notable Victorian philosopher-diplomat Sir Peter Vraila-Armeni, who gave Elizabeth of Austria his villa at Gastouri which enabled her to build the Achilleon Palace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was a highly respected Greek ambassador in St Petersburg and at the Court of St James – indeed when he died Queen Victoria was so upset that she instructed one of her warships to bring his body home to Greece.<\/p>\n