The existing housing stock in the Old Town of Corfu can be crucial for the Island’s resilience, by effectively preserving and using its unique cultural heritage as the driving force towards its sustainable development and urban regeneration. Multi – story, residential buildings with Venetian, French, and British influences, constitute the biggest part of the UNESCO – Listed Site. At the same time, such buildings compose the Old Town’s part with the least data available and the biggest challenges, mainly due to the dwellings’ current use, their state of preservation and the complicated ownership status, parameters which work as obstacles against a building’s retrofitting, either structural or energy.
Corfu due to its location, morphology and climate, experiences constant temperature increase, heavy rainfall and flooding as well as strong winds and thunderstorms. At the same time, earthquakes, either natural (Alexopoulos et al., 2022) or induced (Smyrou et., al 2024), set in constant danger the Island’s unique and rich tangible cultural heritage, and particularly its poorly preserved part.
As recent studies indicate (Maistrou et al., 2025), it is more urgent than ever before to protect the Old Town of Corfu from upcoming tremendous weather and geological events. A major step towards achieving this, is the detailed documentation and assessment of its existing housing stock, which constitutes its largest part, but is usually neglected since more attention is paid on bigger monuments. The fact that Architecture is the newest addition, expanding the Creative Cities Network's focus beyond its traditional seven fields, constitutes a unique opportunity for the Old Town of Corfu to be included. Corfu’s Old Town designation as UNESCO Creative City is expected to be the first step of the proposed Program PreCorfu, and will help in acquiring funding from organisations such as Horizon Europe, EU Funding Portal, Hellenic Republic Ministry of Development General Secretariat for Research and Innovation and more.
The Program will follow a multidisciplinary approach divided into 5 steps. Initially the Old Town’s housing stock will be divided into sub - domains based on the buildings’ construction period and architectural, morphological and construction characteristics. Independent multidisciplinary groups will be created, one per sub - domain. Afterwards, the data already collected during completed and on - going research programs, and the new data collected during the PreCorfu Program, will be combined for the creation of an Online Data Base. This 2nd step includes the detailed documentation assessment on existing condition, building assessment, historical and architectural assessment, building materials & structural integrity investigation, building consistency, building services, and energy performance evaluation per building. After the detailed documentation assessment follows the 3rd step which includes on – site measurements & laboratory testing, as well as structural and energy analysis for building performance optimization per dwelling. In the case of buildings constructed with natural materials, structural and energy behaviour varies. Consequently, each dwelling should be examined independently. Afterwards, (4th step) the extracted results will be compared so that the suitable structural and energy retrofitting techniques are selected. The proposed retrofitting techniques will be evaluated both by Software Analysis and Laboratory Testing before their final application (5th step).
The Program shall be a result of the interdepartmental cooperation of various Greek and European Academic and Research Institutions. Its expected contributions include: 01. The full documentation of the historic housing stock, based on which in case of potential future disasters, like earthquakes or extreme climate events, it could be fully rebuilt. 02. The creation of a complete Virtual Museum of the Old – Town of Corfu, following the Corfu Virtual Exhibition site which has been created recently. This complete digital representation should be completed before the final phase of the Project, so that tourists can visit virtually the parts of the Old Town which will not be accessible due to the on – going restoration works. In this way the Island will continue to make profits from tourism, part of which could be used for the restoration works. After the completion of the restoration works, the virtual museum can play a crucial role in the Island’s cultural heritage management, since by providing online access, it can significantly help in mitigating overtourism, without profit decrease, and protect the archaeological site from the unavoidable damages caused by the rapid increase of visitors. 03. Abandoned and closed buildings will be restored and reused by blending new functions with their historical identity, playing thus a critical role in the Island’s combined preservation, urban regeneration and local economy upgrade. 04. PreCorfu Program could be a pilot program, a local initiative which could be a model for other Greek cities as well.
