Named for Achilles, the 1891 Achilleion Palace was built for Austro-Hungarian Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria (‘Sisi’) as a classically Greek-inspired summer residence until her 1898 assassination by an Italian anarchist. Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II owned it (1907) until it became a 1919 spoil of war for Greece. It served as school, hospital & headquarters from 1914 on. Restored in 1962, it was a casino & setting for a 1981 James Bond film. The landscape, foliage, architecture and art studies are accompanied by Johann C. Bach’s lively Quartet in B-flat Major (Rondo), performed by the Quartetto Gelato.
