Before the British sold Parga to Ali Pasha of Ioannina in 1819, the townspeople dug up the bones of their dead. They would not leave their ancestors in a place ruled by the man they feared. Carrying the exhumed remains with them as they boarded ships for Corfu, the people of Parga abandoned a town whose whitewashed houses cascaded down a hillside toward a cerulean bay — a town they had defended for four hundred years against Ottomans, pirates, and rival powers. That act of grief, that refusal to leave the dead to a conqueror, became the defining image of Parga. The Italian painter Francesco Hayez later made it the subject of a famous canvas: *The Refugees of Parga*.
Parga's deep attachment to Venice — and Venice's sometimes lukewarm reciprocation — shaped the town for most of its modern history. The town passed under Venetian control in 1401, administered as a mainland exclave of Corfu. From that base, it spent the next four centuries oscillating between periods of uneasy peace and violent incursion.
The neighbors were a constant source of friction. The Albanian beys of Ottoman-controlled Margariti, a few kilometers inland, competed with Venice for control of the agricultural land between the two towns. In 1537, Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa burned the fortress and the houses within it. The Venetians rebuilt the castle, then watched the Ottomans demolish it again, then rebuilt it a third and final time in 1572, creating a stronghold that would remain impregnable for nearly two and a half more centuries.
Parga was known as a refuge: for klephts, for Souliotes fleeing Ali Pasha's campaigns in the mountains above, for anyone who needed the protection of a Venetian-flagged harbor on an otherwise Ottoman shore. The winged lion of Saint Mark — Venice's emblem — still marks the arched gate of the castle entrance.
The Republic of Venice fell in 1797. What followed for Parga was a decade of political uncertainty as the town passed through French hands, sought Russian support, and eventually appealed to the British for protection. In 1815, the inhabitants revolted against French rule and sought British intervention. The British came — and then, in 1819, sold them.
In exchange for a monetary settlement, the British ceded Parga to Ali Pasha of Ioannina, the Ottoman governor who had long coveted the town. The decision was deeply unpopular in Britain as well as in Greece. The people of Parga, predominantly Greek and fiercely pro-Venetian, refused to remain. Rather than live under the rule of the man whose forces had murdered and enslaved neighboring populations — in 1812, his nephew Daut Bey had massacred and enslaved the people of the adjacent settlement of Agia — they chose collective exile.
The exhumation of the bones was not a spontaneous gesture. It was a deliberate communal act, a declaration that the dead belonged to the living who claimed them, and that no conqueror could hold what the people chose to carry away. The town was completely abandoned. Ali Pasha moved into the castle, added a Turkish bath and harem quarters at the top of the fortress, and the place that had sheltered Souliotes and klephts fell silent.
Parga today is called the "Bride of Epirus," and the name is not an exaggeration. Built amphitheatrically on a hillside above the Ionian Sea, the town rises in terraces of orange-roofed white houses, bougainvillea spilling over stone walls, with the Venetian castle at the crown of the hill and the sea spread below. In summer, boats arrive from Paxos, Antipaxos, and Corfu. Beaches — Valtos, Kryoneri, Lichnos, Sarakiniko — ring the headlands.
The castle itself preserves layers of its contested history. The Venetian stonework, the winged lion, and the inscription "ANTONIO BERVASS 1764" sit alongside the structural additions Ali Pasha made after 1819. Standing on the castle walls, the view takes in the sweep of the bay and the small island of Panagia with its white chapel sitting just offshore. It is one of the more beautiful positions in Greece, which is one reason so many powers wanted it for so long.
The people who left in 1819 did not all stay gone. In 1830, the Ottoman governor Kutahi invited the people of Parga to return to their homeland, and some did. By 1877, Greek was the predominant language in town, even among the local Muslim element. The town passed into Greek hands in 1913 following the Balkan Wars.
The 20th century brought its own violent disruptions. In 1924, 1,500 Albanian-speaking Muslims from the Parga area were transported to Turkey as part of the population exchange following the Greco-Turkish War — a forced relocation that generated protests at the League of Nations. During the Axis occupation of the 1940s, the town was targeted by German anti-guerrilla operations, with Wehrmacht units assisted by Italian forces and Cham Albanian armed groups, resulting in the burning of Greek settlements and the killing of civilians. The remaining Muslim Cham community fled to Albania at the war's end.
Parga's long cycle of loyalty, betrayal, exile, and return eventually settled into something quieter. The town that was sold, abandoned, exhumed, and reborn is now one of the most visited places on the Ionian coast. The bones came back too — or at least, the people who carried them did.
Parga sits at approximately 39.28°N, 20.40°E on the Ionian coast of the Preveza regional unit, about 65 km from Aktion National Airport (LGPZ). Approaching from the southeast, the bay and the castle headland are clearly visible from 4,000 feet on a clear day. The Venetian castle occupies a prominent hilltop at the western edge of the town, with white buildings cascading toward the harbor. The small island of Panagia is visible in the bay. Valtos Beach stretches to the northwest of the castle. The Acheron River plain is visible to the south. Best viewed from 3,000–5,000 feet AGL approaching from offshore.