Ionian Islands in Venetian hands since 1238. The islands thus became the only part of the Greek-speaking world to escape Ottoman rule, which gave them both a unity and an importance in Greek history they would otherwise not have had. Corfu was the only Greek island never conquered by the Turks. Under Venetian rule, many of the upper classes spoke Italian (or Venetian in some cases) and converted to Roman Catholicism, but the majority remained Greek ethnically, linguistically, and religiously. In the 18th century, a Greek national independence movement began to emerge, and the free status of the Ionian islands made them
Technological Educational Institute of the Ionian Islands was the first university of modern Greece. In 1908 Panayis Athanase Vagliano donated the "Agricultural School of Argostoli" and in 1915 the "Vallianos Vocational School" in Lixouri. In 2003 these two schools and some others in the Ionian Islands were unified to the new TEI of the Ionian Islands. The university comprises four Schools and six Departments. The ATHENA Reform Plan restructured the institute's departments in 2013. The language of instruction at the TEI of Ionian Islands is Greek. Therefore, a good knowledge of Greek is essential for regular students. However, special arrangements are made for certain number of courses