At the beginning of August 1832, the poet settled in the building that now houses the Solomos Museum and which belonged to the Italian scholar Flaminius Lolli. In this house, opossite the little island of Vidos, he lived the last 25 years of his life, wrote his best poetry and died there on February 9, 1857. In the year 1961, the Corfiot Studies Society started the restoration works of the building, in which Dionysios Solomos lived the last twenty-five years of his life.
The Corfiot Studies Society (ECS) was founded as an Association in 1952 with the aim of researching the history, folklore and, in general, the intellectual and artistic production of Corfu and consequently of the Ionian Islands.
The building was destroyed by the first Italian bombings of 1941. The plans and studies for the reconstruction and layout of the building were donated by the civil engineers, Georgios Linardos and Renos Paipetis, and the Architect, Ioannis Kollas. The basis of the Solomos Museum was, for many years, the material – mainly photographic – used by Octave Merlier in the exhibition he had organized in 1957, at the French Institute of Athens, for the hundred year anniversary of the death of Dionysios Solomos.
The Solomos Museum today houses the Poet’s office and a small autograph. It is additionally home to revealing photographic material, pertaining to the places, the persons and the events that are related to the life, the work, and the time of Solomos. Furthermore, there is an extensive Solomian library, which is constantly enriched and which includes all the old editions of the “Hymn to Liberty”. There is also a series of portraits of the Poet and the members of the so-called Solomic School and is an important spiritual chapter for every scholar and associate of the Solomonic project.
More information:
Solomos Museum of Corfu
Colleagues
Advertisement
Discussion