Villas in Kassiopi.

Kassiopi anchors the most quietly coveted stretch of coastline in the Ionian: the twenty kilometres of cypress-backed coves running southeast beneath Mount Pantokrator. A harbour village with a Byzantine castle on its headland, it has kept its fishing-port scale while becoming the service town for the villa country around it.

That villa country is a litany of small bays. Kalami, where Lawrence Durrell wrote The Prospero's Cell in the White House at the water's edge — still a taverna and villa today. Agni, three celebrated tavernas on one crescent of pebbles, best arrived at by boat. Nissaki's deep clear water below the olive terraces; Avlaki's breezy open beach; Kouloura's postcard harbour ringed by cypresses. The holiday here is measured in swims, boat moorings and long taverna lunches.

And the coast has one more distinction: it faces Albania across a strait that narrows to about two nautical miles. From a villa terrace at Kalami, the mountains opposite are the newest Riviera in Europe — thirty minutes away by ferry from Corfu Town, a natural day trip by private boat.