Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Zagori part 5 – Villages of Zagori


Time to finish this small series about Zagori. By chance, I just realized that I managed to fit in all posts in December, so I can call this “December with Zagorochoria” :-P I will come back to this region in some undefined future, but for now, lets close this one and go back to Patras.
As the finali, I want to write about villages themselves. The name Zagorochoria, after all, means exactly “the villages”, so they could easily be the first not the last to mention. But, last does not mean least :-P The villages are integral part of Zagorian landscape and therefore cannot be missed in the whole picture. Traditional stone buildings covered with slate roofs, narrow cobbled streets made entirely from local stone, central main squares under the shadow of big platano tree, with cafes and tavernas around, impressive stone churches – all this is not an everyday view. Inside the houses, You can find wooden carvings on the ceiling, walls decorated with painted cupboards, almost always a tzaki in the corner. Traditional guest houses offer old wooden furniture and beautiful carpets on the wooden floors. All this wood and stone combination gives impressive look both to interior and exterior of each building.


The Zagorian villages during years of foreign occupation were the main areas of maintaining and preserving the Greek heritage. Today, villages of Papigko and Monodendri are entirely declared as national historical monuments. The village from the photo is Kipoi (gr “the gardens”) located on the hill on its south side, bathing in morning sun. It was a little frosty morning, when I took the photo, though You can see a gentle fog and morning smog over the houses coming out out tzakia.

Photo: NIKON D70s, AP, f 1/8, 1/250s, -0.3EV, f=78 mm (for 35mm), GIMP software

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