visitors
The number of foreign visitors coming to Mani has hugely increased since Kalamata opened its military airport to charter flights in the early 1990’s. Before this time, the journey here required a little more determination and effort, involving a Peloponnesian bus ride down from Athens. Then if you consider that the main road from Kalamata to Stoupa was built as recently as 1955, then just 50 years ago, the journey here was even tougher and in those days, the quickest way from Athens was by ship. And yet despite the area being tucked away on the periphery of mainland Europe and the difficulties of travelling around such a mountainous terrain, there has been a significant flow of visitors here since the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century. By “visitors” I mean people coming here to travel, to research and record and to write about their experiences, not the endless flow of foreign armies who have tried to invade the area, usually with very little success. This latter point of war and conflict, whether with alien forces or amongst the fierce Maniots themselves, made any visit here even more treacherous. But people came and records of their visits give us an invaluable insight into life here over the years. Here is a brief survey of what some of these visitors recorded from the Middle Ages onwards along with a series of ink drawings and sketches, all from the early nineteenth century, with their corresponding present day view (where often a fair amount of “artistic licence” has been applied). But first one man should be mentioned for providing a guide to these post Byzantine visitors. PAUSANIAS- 2nd century AD. A doctor from Greek Asia Minor, Pausanias must be the first to have visited Greece with the specific intention of writing a guide on her historical buildings, statues and tombs as well as giving information on their mythological, historical and religious backgrounds. Kardamyli and Stoupa (Leuktra) get a brief mention- in those days the town of Kardamyli was “a mile from the sea”, set on a rocky acropolis which you can still scramble up to if you feel the need and of course he refers to Homer and the offer of Agamemnon to Achilles. As for Leuktra, he writes that “on the acropolis is a sanctuary of Athene with a statue, and there are a shrine and a sacred wood of Love”, the latter of which is now obviously long gone. He also refers to Homeric “Enope”, the town that once stood around the hill of Zarnata by the modern day village of Cambos, which in Puasanias’ time was known as Gerenia. He describes a bronze statue of Machaon (Asklepios’s son), which explains the name of one of the coffee shops in Cambos.
A romanticised depiction of Maniots in terms of their clothing- they did not wear the traditional “foustanella”. Stackelberg must have been somewhere near the Kolokotronis Hotel/ Agnatio Bar, above the new supermarket in Stoupa. The small castle shown on top of the acropolis was built by the Franks.
Like all serious travellers in Mani he did not just explore the Outer Mani but ventured south through Thalames and Oitylon to get into Deep Mani, describing various statues and shrines along the way. He made it right to the end of the peninsula to Cape Tainaron., passing en route “Sandy Harbour” (now called Porto Kaiyo) and “Achilles Harbour” (Marmaris). At the cape itself he describes “ a shrine shaped like a cave with a statue of Poseidon in front of it” as well as a bronze statue of Arion the musician, mounted on a dolphin. He also refers to a magic pool that gave a reflection of the future when looked into- that is until some ill-informed local woman took her washing there and therefore destroyed this special power.
If you visit Tainaron today, it is a rugged, infertile place with a virtually non-existent population, but in Pausanias’ day it was a thriving town that had, it is believed, a population of over 5,000. All that remains now are the foundations of buildings that hewn into the rock- the more you look, the more you will find, but still it is difficult to imagine a thriving town with temples and shrines, flocks of animals being herded on the surrounding forested hills and numerous craft in the harbours. Unfortunately, Pausanias himself was not at all interested in recording such details on population and trade. Hundreds of years after Pausanias had written his guide to Greece, his book became a main reference to many of the Mani’s visitors as Europe, awoken from medieval times, became increasingly interested in the world of Ancient Greece. It would take a long time to list all of these visitors, so here is just a sample of what was written and recorded over the last five centuries: One of the first to visit was a Calabrian merchant and antiquarian, Ciriaco Anconitina, who toured Italy, Greece, Asia Minor and Egypt. Through his acquaintance with the Palaiologo despots he was inspired to come to Mani before the Turks sacked Mystras in 1460 and landed by ship at Marmaris in the south in 1447. He made extensive notes and drawings of the monuments and inscriptions he found here- all of his travels were written up in six huge volumes only to be destroyed by fire in 1514. Fortunately some excerpts were copied before this disaster, including this drawing of an antique grave stele recycled into the walls of a thirteenth century church in the village of Keria. As the photos taken by Bob Barrow show, unfortunately sometime within the last 5 years, this piece of antiquity has been stolen.
With the fall of neighbouring Mystras and the ensuing efforts of the Turks to gain control of Mani, the remainder of the fifteenth century and the next two hundred years did not provide conducive conditions for exploration for the sake of exploration- instead foreigners who visited came for reasons associated with war. For example, one Fabiano Barbo came here in 1571 to sign a pact between the Maniot chiefs and the Venetians and twenty years later the Italian geographer Giuseppe Rosaccio visited to plot ports and staging posts in Mani to form part of his book that covered Venice to Constantinople. The seventeenth century saw a continuation of mainly foreign emissaries coming to Mani as the conflict with Turkey intensified and placed the area in the middle of a battle between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire. For example in 1618 envoys from the Duke of Nevers, a distant descendant of the Byzantine Palaiologos family, were sent in response to the Maniot pleas for military help. Although nothing came to fruition, the records made by the Duke’s representatives provide an insight into life at that time. For example, the size of various villages were noted, according to how many families lived in them (and at that time a family could have consisted of up to ten members):
During this time of war it was not just westerners who recorded what they saw but the “enemy” as well. In the successful campaign of 1670, the Turkish army in Mani carried with it a war historian by the name of Evliya Celebi. Naturally as the enemy and as a muslim he was not too complimentary in what he wrote about the Maniots. Constantly referring to them as the “infidel” who, due to excessive wine drinking, “sleep like pigs”, he painted a very poor picture of life in Deep Mani. “The place is covered with stones- there is no soil at all”. This particularly upset him as he saw no vines, fruit trees or gardens and he comments that the only water available was collected in cisterns. He also recorded the sizes of various villages but rather than counting by the number of families he used the number of houses as his measurement; as an example:
He also gives a description of a typical male from Deep Mani- “they are dark-skinned, small in stature with large heads, round eyes with voices like sheep dogs, thick, black hair of shoulder length, slim trunk, slender legs, broad feet and they leap from crag to crag like fleas.” Moving into the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the age of Enlightenment, the reasons for visiting Greece started to change from the diplomacies of war to a thirst for a comprehensive classification of human knowledge at the centre of which was ancient Greece. Although the Mani was not yet free from conflict with the Ottomans (and in fact her role in European political affairs increased due to her strategic position in the Mediteranean), the number of visitors coming here, some clutching Pausanias as a guide, steadily increased. A good example of how visiting Greece slowly became part of the “Grand Tour” (as opposed to just Italy) to wealthy western Europeans are the letters written home by JBS Morritt. At the age of 22, he set out from Yorkshire on a tour of Italy, Asia Minor and Greece. As he entered the Morea (Peloponnese) he was made aware of the potential dangers of getting as far south as Mani; “ It (Mani) is inhabited by Greeks, the real descendants of the Lacedemonians, and they have in this corner resisted all the efforts of the Turks, to whom they pay neither tribute nor obedience, and who dare not approach the country. They are all robbers, or rather pirates and infest the seas with small armed boats, which pillage all the small craft from port to port. In their country a total stranger is sure to be stripped of everything he has, though they seldom murder; but we understand that by applying at Kalamata, a town near them, we may get such protection as to be ale to visit anything to be seen there in perfect safety.” Morritt took the risk of coming to Mani, largely lured by the belief that he was the first foreigner to go there. Having applied for security at Kalamata, he found things to be a little different from what he was expecting, as he wrote to his sister: “If I see any danger of not getting out of it (Mani), it is not from banditti but from the hospitality and goodness of its inhabitants and we really have thoughts of domiciliating and staying in Maina” (a familiar story in modern times!). Other than hospitality, perhaps there was another Maniot trait that was tempting him to stay. Whilst in Kardamyli he stayed with a man who had four daughters: “they were beautiful beyond measure; and of his older daughters one was, I think, the handsomest woman I ever saw. To give you some idea of their style of dress: On their heads is a plain, small circle, either of shawl worked with gold or, sometimes, a red or green velvet cap embroidered round with gold, forming a coronet. Over this floats a long veil of white, embroidered muslin. One end hangs over the right shoulder behind and the other, hanging loose across their breast, is thrown also over the right shoulder. They wear a tight, high camisole of`red silk and gold, buttoned with coloured stones across the breast. A short waistcoat, which is cut quite low and clasps tight around their waist, is made of muslin and gold, with small globe buttons. A red sash and long flowing robes of white muslin and gold are below. Over these they wear a red, green or light blue silk gown, cut straight and entirely open before, embroidered in the richest manner, the long sleeves sometimes of different colours. On their necks are rows of gold chains in the English mode exactly.”
Staying in Kardamyli and with the theme of foreign antiquarians, the Englishman Charels Robert Cockerell was given hospitality by the Mourtzinos family there (whose fortified settlement has now been partially restored), along with his Estonian colleague OM von Stackelberg in 1813, just eight years before the War of Independence began. Von Stackelberg made a series of prints from his original sketches made while in Mani. As 1821 approached, the year the war for freedom against the Ottomans began in Greece (in Areopolis), so it was inevitable that the European powers would send an increasing number of envoys here to conduct diplomacy and record the strategic, geographical and military situations they found. In 1805 lieutenant-colonel William Martin Leake was sent from Britain for this very reason and true to his cloth, recorded what he saw with military precision. As well as being fastidious on timings- “…proceeding in a south-east direction, we arrive at 9.55 upon the summit of a ridge….”- he also recorded specific facts and figures to do with the area. To quote a few;
But Leake was not only interested in statistics that may have been of use to his government, but he too carried Pausanias and held an interest in the area’s ancient heritage. For example, he surmised that the church of Aghi Asomati at Tainaron had a much older history. Having measured “parts of the church walls formed of ancient wrought blocks” he concluded, perhaps inaccurately, that “the church, instead of facing to the east as Greek churches usually do, faces south-eastward, towards the head of the port, which is likely to have been the aspect of the temple. There can be little or no doubt that it was the celebrated temple of Tainarian Neptune.”
Others visited not to classify the ancient remains to be found here but in the case of John Sibthorp, the flora of the area. In 1795 he collected plant specimens from the peaks of Taygetos. A few years later, the botanist Dimo Stephanopoli, himself a descendant from Oitylo came with his nephew on the instruction of Napolean to gather information about the area. Likewise, in 1829, a team of enthusiastic geographers, surveyors, scholars, botanists and archaeologists formed the French Scientific Expedition in the Peloponnese and came down to Mani. By 1833, Greece had firmly established itself as an independent nation, free at last from Ottoman control, with the arrival of their new King, Otto of Bavaria. Conditions were now much easier for foreign visitors and a steady flow of archaeologists, historians, and sociologists came to Mani. The third Earl of Carnarvon is a good example of how the sphere of interest in the area widened from the earlier motives of international diplomacy or the study of ancient relics. He came in 1839 and stayed with the famous Mavromichalis family in Limeni. He wrote on a wide variety of aspects of Maniot life, from administrative organisation to traditions and customs, from feuding to the role of the church. The tower village of Kita has popped up on a couple of occasions before and so, to add another, this is what he observed when he stayed there: “Daybreak was ushered in by a discharge of firearms and on inquiry I learnt that it was in honour of a marriage. The man was already married, but having had no children by his wife, he was permitted, with her consent- and, it is affirmed, under the sanction of a priest- to be united to another woman of the place. It is said here that if he should have by this second union, that son would in the Maina be considered legitimate, and the first wife could be repudiated. On my asking some further questions, it appeared that his first marriage had indeed given him three daughters; but my informant repeated his statement ‘that there were no children’- so completely are girls counted as nothing in this country. One of muleteers clinched the argument by the additional question of ‘how could a man wish to have anything to do with a woman who brought him no sons.’
The house in the foreground was certainly once a
water mill- the water channels are still to
Moving into the twentieth century, the pattern of visitors continues. Certainly in the first half, the area seems to have retained its customs and traditions that make it such a unique place. Kevin Andrews, an American archaeologist, spent four years in Greece right in the middle of the vicious civil war that bedevilled the country in the aftermath of World War Two and wrote up his experiences in “the Flight of Ikaros”. He came to Mani from his studies in Athens by ship, docking at Gerolimenas in the south and was clearly affected by his initial impressions; “Someone helped me out on to the pebbly beach of a port just big enough for a few fishing boats. People thronged around me in total silence, with swarthy faces close to mine, faces the colour of earth with eye-sockets like black holes under the vertical sun. Here there was no gabble of tongues, none of the glistening, mercurial web of glances avid of perception: all eyes looked straight ahead. Everybody was armed; round the port and up and down the street shot-guns and rifles pointed behind each man’s back, with cartridge-belts slung one upon the other across chests and shoulders, holsters sticking out of trouser pockets, while the swarm of intent and speechless men moved like troops in a village behind the lines.” This description of how the Maniot males were armed is echoed by another twentieth century visitor, who unlike JBS Morritt a hundred and fifty years earlier, did stay in the area. In Sir Patrick Leigh Fermour’s “the Mani” he gives a lengthy description of their dress, though the picture he paints is not contemporary but rather a summary of prints he had seen from earlier times. “Baggy trousers with many pleats just below the knees with legs either bare or greaved in embroidered gaiters, their oriental slippers sometimes turned up at the tip. Over their shirts they wore a short bolero as stiffly galooned with bullion as a bullfighter’s jacket. (Petrobey Mavromichalis, when Leake visited the Mani, wore a coat of green velvet charged with gold lace). Their great moustaches would sometimes measure eight inches across and their hair fell in thick black waves over their shoulders. At a raffish angle on the side of their heads was perched the soft, ‘broken fez’ with its long black tassel of heavy silk. Over the sash their middles were caught in with belts equipped in front with a slotted marsupial flap of leather to hold their arsenal of weapons: the almost straight pistols whose butts tapered and then swelled into knobs at the end like wrought silver crab-apples; khangars, those long knives with branching hafts of bone or ivory that spread like two out-curving horns; and, their chief weapon for close-quarter fighting, the yataghan, its ivory hilt dividing like the khangar, the long subtle blade curving and straightening again as fluidly as a flame. Often, too, they would carry cross-hilted scimitars whose blades described a semicircle……Their long-barrelled guns, which resembled Afghan jezails, were so heavy that they could only be aimed when resting on a rock or a branch.”
Sadly, perhaps the greatest change that occurred in twentieth century Mani was a process of gradual decay, leaving the area as one of the poorest in Europe. The days of gold laced silks and velvet have been replaced by massive de-population, leaving the historic tower houses and Byzantine churches to crumble. One of Leigh Fermour’s encounters in the late 1950’s clearly illustrates the level of poverty. On the Tigani peninsula he met a mother and daughter, collecting rock salt. “They worked here all summer, they said, and sometimes in the winter too, sleeping over in the huge cave by the chapel of the Hodygytria…..It wasn’t much of a life, the mother said. How much could they sell the salt for? It was the equivalent, in drachmae, of sixpence an oka. And how much could they gather in a day? On good days, she said, a bit more than an oka; on bad days rather less. It all depended. Then she threw back her head and let out a laugh of genuine amusement in which there was not a trace of bitterness.” Moving into the twenty- first century, the area as a whole needs to benefit from the recent development in tourism. Foreign visitors could yet save the day. There is a small exhibition showing the history of visitors to the Mani in the restored “Chrani Tower” at Gytheio. Though it does not have the original prints it is worth a visit least of all as it is in such a tranquil spot on the small “island” located at the western end of the town. Admission is only a couple of euros.
a challenge! It is not easy trying to find the precise location of where the artist sat when these nineteenth century drawings were made. We have left two in northern Mani as a challenge to readers- the best efforts will be printed in next years’ magazine.
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