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
Albanian Ionian Sea Coast impacted by various environmental factors, many of which are with conservation of national significance. In terms of phytogeography, the Albanian Ionian Sea Coast belongs to the illyrian province of the circumboreal region within the boreal kingdom. It falls entirely within the illyrian deciduous forests terrestrial ecoregion of the palearctic mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub. The vegetation is predominantly represented by evergreen and decidious shrubs associated with the mediterranean sea. The woodlands, close to freshwater habitats, are represented by the alluvial, mixed and conifer forests but also coastal woods. The forests, at higher elevations, contain various pine, oak, beech and fir