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 to the mountainous terrain of the country, the western lowlands consists mostly of coastal lowlands and plains. The Albanian Ionian Sea Coast is known for its rugged natural beauty, with rocky highlands and a great marine life, while the Albanian Adriatic Sea Coast consist of sandy beaches and shallow coastal waters. The coastline covers an extensive part of the Ceraunian Mountains, which extends parallel immediately along the Ionian Sea, starting at Sarandë, running for over 100 kilometers in a southeast-northwest direction along the Albanian Riviera, to Orikum. The mountainous interior is fragmented into several massifs often reaching 2,000 metres above