THASSOS TRAVEL GUIDE

THASSOS > ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURE

Wood and stone

The traditional house of the island is usually built in parallel to the inclination of the ground and is rarely built vertically. Thus it can be two storied from the one side and one storied from the other. Whenever it has a garden it is usually surrounded by a tall wall (Theologos, Rahoni) and has probably an oven, moreover you can enter the house by using a secured door canopy. Sometimes, when the inclination of the ground is very big (Kastro) there aren’t any yards. Most of the times, the house has rectangle or square ground floor or even more complicated. Floor’s inclination is also the main reason why the buildings rarely reach the third floor.

The ground floors can be used as warehouses for the harvests, or stables for the animals and the loom can be put too. The main house usually has one room or sometimes two, separated by a stone-wall. Small openings on the walls are used for ventilation and are used to protect from the pirates. Then, an extra room could be found in the same floor. The outside doors are made from wood; they are usually big and tall so the animals can enter the yard. Furthermore, they are hasped with a bolt stored on the wall. An internal scale of wood or an exterior made of stone, leads to the first floor, which has its exterior walls made of stone. The middle wall of the ground floor runs up till the roof, all the other walls are made of “tsatmas” and whenever there is an outer door (Kastro) it is also secured with a bolt.

The best room of the house is odas, it doesn’t have a fireplace but has a lot of windows and the ceiling is made of wood. The rest of the house consists of summer or winter-bedrooms, with fireplace and windows on both sides of the wall. There is no kitchen in the first place. Later on, there is one but is really of small space. There are no bathrooms inside the house they are usually located outside, in the yard.

Neoclassic

The neoclassic style of Thassos is directly connected to the establishment of the two most important seaside settlements of Limenas and Limenaria. The growth of Limenaria, which began in 1902, was rapid, because of the spelter mines that were exploited by German company Speidel. The economic prosperity of the “Greek California” resulted in the construction of two or three storied houses of the same size, decorated with plant patterns. The ceiling was usually made of French tiles. The walls are still made from wood and stone.

Metogia

Metohia are properties fully depended on the monastery they belong. They have buildings where the workers used to live in, mills and warehouses but they didn’t necessarily include a church. In Thassos all the monasteries of Agio Oros as well as the monastery of Ecosifinisa had metohia. Products imported from the island were wine and olive oil. The oldest properties dated back to the 13th (Filotheou, Karacalou) and 12th century (Ecosifinisa). In the end of the 14th century all the properties of Thassos were granted to the monasteries of Agio Oros so that during the Turkish occupation, every metohi could remain Greek.

Real estate of metohia kept rising due to the constant donations of people who wanted to be included in churches’ books. That granted the monasteries with almost all of Thassos’ land leaving the locals with no land and forcing them to work in the monasteries’ fields. Finally, agricultural law of dictatorship gave back the peasants all of Thassos’ fields.