The palace was built for the empress of Austria Elisabeth-Evgenia-Amalia, wife of emperor of Austria Fragiskos Gosiphie.
The empress Elisabeth was born in Munich in Bavaria 1837 she was daughter of duke Bayer Maximilian Gosiphie she was beautiful, was of high breed, liberal, good imagination, she also had a good writer spirit.

Only 16 years old Elisabeth gets married to emperor of Austria Fragisco Gosiphie in 1854, when he was 24 years old. The grace and spirit of Elisabeth made him love her for the first time he saw her . After a while in the marriage Elisabeth found herself in a hard position with her mother in law, duchess Sofia, a very dominant person, Elisabeth was sensitive and took everything hard. She could not stand the depressing atmosphere in the place they lived. About six years later she starts her travels because she cant stand her mother in law. She left without her husband on the trips. She went to Madeira at first then to Trieste and after Trieste she went to Corfu, when she saw the beauty of this island she instantly felt in love with it. 

The 27^th  of June 1861 she comes back to Corfu and the English commissioner granted her the Mon Repo place. It is the second time Elisabeth falls in love with the island of Corfu. She enjoyed to walk in this beauty all the time and the men living here called her the "walking empress". One time she went to Pontikonissi island and in the wall of the church she started to write in Latin "Elisabeth of Austria gets rest here" as memory of the place. She lived in the Mon Repo place for many months and her husband miss her and wanted to see her again. In the end of 1869 he came to Corfu and he gave her the promise that he never let his mother to disturb her again. She went with him. At this time she had two children, Rudolf and Giselle. When they got back from Corfu they had a new child, Valeria, since she was the younger one she got more love from her parents. The duchess Sofia died and Giselle the daughter of Elisabeth got married to the prince of Bavaria Leopoldos,16 years old, just like her mother. Elisabeth is very sad about this because she could not stand the idea of her daughter being away from her. Elisabeth brother in law, the emperor of Mexico got murdered by revolutionaries. His wife Carlota gets mad from all this and her madness make her hate Elisabeth. Ludovic the second the King of Bavaria also Elisabeth cousin drowned in a lake. She loved him dearly and she hurt a lot when he died. The 18 years old girl Mathili the daughter of the duke Albert dies in a fire in Paris. All of these incidents breaks her sensitive heart. She decided to leave again  and her husband didn’t care if she left or not because he had in mind in government business at this time. He was still very much in love with her, but because of her sadness he had an affair with an actress called Ekatarini. The  relationship between the emperor and the actress gets a bit more serious and that made Elisabeth leave for Hungary. Here she starts her usual walking again because of sadness and she had a walking partner this time Count Aftrasi. He is a great comfort for her.

She starts her travels again to France, England, Holland, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Middle East and Algeria. The 6^th of September 1876 she came back to Corfu but she stayed only for one day, becasue she was on her way to Athens. She was there for a little while and returned to Corfu 13^th of September 1876. 


In 1881 in Vienna there was a sculpture exhibition  and Elisabeth was there. There was one thing that captured her eyes, a sculpture of Achilles trying to remove an arrow from his heel. The sculpture was made of Herter. The sculpture was made out of some kind of plastic. Elisabeth loved it so much that she asked Herter to make one exactly the same in marble for her. Her husband the emperor gave her the stature as a gift to her and put it in the garden of the Leins place.  

In 1885 she goes to Trea and visits the area of the Trojan war. After Trea she goes to Jerusalem, Alexandria and Rhodes. And she went back to Corfu. She contacts the consulate of Austria with a wish to recreate the garden of Alkoonoos. The years goes by and her depressed heart gets filled with love again, but as always a new bad thing happened in her life. In 1889 her son Rudolph and his mistress Vetsera  got murdered. The shock of her sons death made her want to go back to Corfu. She came back and went for her walks, this time up to the area Goustori. There she saw a great property and wanted to buy it, but the man she wanted to buy it from didn’t want her to give money so he gave it to her as a gift. Elisabeth wanted to build a small simple place here but the Italian architects  had something else in mind for this spot. She went from Corfu for a little while and she got back when the palace was done, this was in 1891. When she got back to see what they had made she saw the Achilleon Palace. She filled the palace with great art and she filled the garden with fake rivers, plants, beautiful flowers, tree and statues of the nine muses, and a lovely portrait of her favorite poet, Heine.

The next owner of the Achilleon Palace destroyed this image and the statue she got from her husband of Achilles and put instead the 3 meters tall statue we can see today of Achilles. She spent a lot of time when she was in her palace to help the villagers of Goustori, went to the church in the neighborhood, reading the Iliad. Elisabeth spent almost 8 years in the Achilleon Palace. Her sister died later in a fire in Paris and this accident that happened made Elisabeth loose her mind. This is the end of the story about the lovely Sissy and her love for the island Corfu and Achilles.





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