PALACE
A small restaurant.
A hillside.
A man named George.
That's Dr. George, around 1985. The pose, the pink, the welcome — none of it has aged. Dr. George founded it. Dr. George still runs it.
He started with a restaurant.
Then he kept going.
Arestaurant on the sand, right where the Beach Bar is now. Then a few rooms, motel-style, painted pink. An outdoor jacuzzi. A kitchen. A bar.
By the late '80s, word had crossed Europe. People showed up because someone they trusted said:
go to the pink one in Corfu.
One thousand people
in togas,
breaking plates.
Through the '90s and into the 2000s, the Pink Palace had a reputation that crossed continents. The Palladium nightclub filled up nightly. A thousand people in pink togas, ouzo shots making the rounds, Greek dancers breaking plates in the old tradition, a booze cruise that always sold out.
Freddie Mercury, somewhere along the way.
Mornings that ran into afternoons. It was loud, generous, and impossible to fully describe to anyone who hadn't been.
The pink hasn't faded.
The crowd's just got broader.
Sixty summers in, the Pink Palace is still loud when it wants to be. The toga parties run. The Palladium opens on the big nights. Sunset at the Beach Bar still has its own gravitational pull.
But the rest has expanded. Yoga on the terrace. Hikers on the cliff trails. Kayaks at the cove. Digital nomads at the long table. Couples on private balconies. Old guests sending their kids. The hillside doesn't belong to one kind of traveler anymore — it never really did.
The old guests have a Facebook group.
It's better than ours.
Old staff and old guests from the '80s and '90s have a Facebook group where they post their photos. Sun-faded shots from the toga parties. The booze cruise in 1997. The original Beach Restaurant. Friends who became couples who became families. A few of those photos are below.
If you've got photos from a Pink Palace summer — yours, your parents', a friend's — we'd love to see them. Send them to archive@thepinkpalace.com and we'll add to the wall.
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