Paving and Courtyards in Corfu

We lay courtyards and terraces in stone: cobbled yards, flagged terraces, and kantouni paving in the narrow-lane idiom of the island. Most of what we set is reclaimed island cobble and dressed local stone, bedded to fall, jointed to drain, and worn smooth underfoot the way Corfu's old yards have always been.

A courtyard is built from the ground up, not the surface down. We begin with the fall, where water needs to go, then set a compacted sub-base and a bedding layer that holds the stones without floating them. Cobbles are laid tight on edge so the load passes stone to stone, the joints kept fine and the camber true. For a waterside courtyard in reclaimed island cobble, we sort each stone by size and face before it ever goes down, so the finished yard reads as one weathered surface rather than a fresh grid.

Where the ground is dressed stone, flagged terraces, thresholds, the worn paving of a kantouni, we cut and bed each piece to sit flush and carry a clean edge. Flags are jointed with lime, not cement: lime breathes and lets the bed dry, where cement caps the moisture in and lifts the stone over a few hard winters. The same reasoning runs through everything we lay near the sea, where damp is constant and a paving has to shed water rather than trap it.

Stone is the right choice here because it ages in the right direction. A poured surface looks newest the day it's finished and worse every year after; a cobbled or flagged courtyard looks better as it's walked, the high points polishing and the joints settling. Set properly on a true bed with the right fall, it outlives a poured surface many times over, which is the only timescale a Corfu courtyard is really built to.