Corfu Museum of Asian Art: A fascinating journey into the cultures of the East

And yet, the Museum of Asian Art is not only the island’s most extraordinary specimen, but the only one of its kind throughout Greece, with a collection of 15,000 objects promising to transport the visitor to the most remote corners of the Far East.

It is housed in the dazzling Palace of Archangel Michael and Saint George, the largest and most important building of the British rule in the Ionian Islands, which was erected between 1818 and 1823 and served as the residence of the High Commissioner of the Ionian Island, the headquarters of the equestrian order of Saint Michael and Saint George and more.

The Museum is due to the art lover Grigorios Manos, ambassador of Greece to Austria, who invested his entire fortune in the acquisition of thousands of works of Chinese, Korean and Japanese art, bought at auction in Vienna and Paris during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1919, he donated his collection to the Greek state for the purpose of creating a museum, which was finally inaugurated in 1928, appointing him as director; as luck would have, he would soon breathe his last breath in the very museum he had spent his life envisioning.

Subsequent donations of items from Nepal, Tibet, Gandhara (ancient Pakistan), India, Siam (present-day Thailand), Cambodia, and the nomadic peoples of Central Asia resulted in its renaming from the Museum of Sino-Japanese Art to the Museum of Asian Art.

The permanent exhibition is developed over two wings on the first floor, with the Chinese collection, covering almost 30 centuries, and the Japanese collection (14th-19th century) standing out. Among exhibits of unmatched craftsmanship, such as the famous Chinese porcelains and masterpieces of Japanese painting and printmaking, you can marvel at the impressive armour of Samurai warriors, ornate screens and gold-embroidered kimonos, a room dedicated to the Japanese tea ritual and eerie masks of the Noh theatre.