San Stefano was built in 1782 by a member of the great Venetian Giustiniani family, set on rock after an earthquake had destroyed the house before it. It passed by marriage to the Flamburiari family, and in the early twentieth century came to the Manessis as a dowry, when Lily Flamburiari, the present owners’ grandmother, married Petros Manessis.
Who came to San Stefano
The house has a unique place in the history of Corfu, and the family’s visitors’ books show it. Its royal guests included Elisabeth of Austria, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Queen Alexandra. In the twentieth century Vivien Leigh, the designer Roger Furse and Gerald Durrell were among those who enjoyed an evening drink on the balcony.
A cosmopolitan inheritance
The furniture tells the family’s story: links with Venice, with England, with India, where Lily Flamburiari was born in 1896, and with Greece. The dining room displays a set of china given to the family by Sir Frederick Adam, the British High Commissioner, who stayed in the house while overseeing the waterworks above Benitses that finally brought mains water to Corfu Town, in the years when the Ionian Islands were a British Protectorate.
Among the family’s ancestors is the Victorian philosopher-diplomat Sir Peter Vraila-Armeni, Greek ambassador in St Petersburg and at the Court of St James. It was his villa at Gastouri that passed to Elisabeth of Austria and became the site of the Achilleion. Family history records that when he died, Queen Victoria sent one of her warships to carry him home to Greece.
The chapel of St Stephen
In front of the house stands the chapel of St Stephen, whose bell tower you see from the balcony. It is private and used only by the family for family occasions. It once received a fine icon donated by the aunt of Tsar Nicholas II.
The farm buildings
Over the centuries the farm buildings were rented to monks, then to the nuns brought to Corfu by the Tsar’s aunt, and in the First World War they housed the British staff of a field hospital.
The olives
The family owned and ran the olive press by the sea, and in the first half of the twentieth century the estate’s olives were one of the great employers in Benitses. Five acres of olives, oranges and lemons still surround the house. The old press has since been converted, and is now available as additional accommodation down in the village.
Stories guests ask about
Durrell at San Stefano
The real Gerald on the balcony, and the television series filmed in the house.
Villa Belmar
The house on screen in The Marble Hall Murders and The Durrells.
Sisi’s Corfu
The Empress who visited the house, and the palace she built three kilometres away.