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
Ionian Village Ionian Village Ionian Village is the official international summer camping ministry of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, and is located on a private facility on the shores of the Ionian Sea in western Peloponnese. Over 17,000 Greek-Americans have visited the camp since its establishment in 1970. Ionian Village operates a summer travel camp program for Greek-American high school youth. Each summer there are two 20-day sessions, identical in schedule. 200 campers per session fly together from New York to Athens and travel by motor coach to the camp, located near Vartholomio, west of the regional trading town of Amaliada.