King's College London
Exhibitions & Conferences
‘A brighter Hellas’: rediscovering Greece in the 19th century

Audience Chamber of Ali Pasha

Lithographed view of the interior of the chamber, with various groups of figuresAudience Chamber of Ali Pasha"In this Chamber was enacted one of the bloodiest tragedies of crafty and well-devised vengeance ever conceived by man. The village of Garduchi had offended Ali years and years previously; indeed, had almost earned the fearful retribution they met with by cruelly ill-using his mother and sister, whom they had taken prisoners in an affray. Ali’s mother, upon her death-bed, made her son, who was then rising rapidly into notoriety, swear ‘to remember Garduchi;’ and truly he did so. Years rolled on, but he waited until he could accomplish his vengeance fully and decisively. The time arrived, the Beys and celebrities had been invited to a grand banquet in Janina, and the village of Garduchi, miles distant, was surrounded with his soldiers. At a fixed hour these soldiers butchered every inhabitant, and, from the tapestry in the Audience Chamber, the Beys were shot to the last of them. The marks of the bullets are still seen in the walls at the present day."

From a description by the artist, George de la Poer Beresford.

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