The Perama cave is 2 km from Ioannina and if you are in the area it is well worth a visit. The cave was discovered in 1940 when the villagers were taking shelter from the bombing during WWII. After the war it was properly explored by Ioannis and Anna Petrochilou (cave experts) and found to extend for 5km.
It is stunning!
We were glad that we’d taken long sleeve shirts with us as it was 34C outside but only 18C inside – a temperature which remains constant throughout the year.
Metsovo
We arrived in Metsovo just as the rain started to fall so we repaired to a nearby restaurant for a delicious bean soup. Unfortunately by the time we finished our meal the heavens had opened completely. Undaunted, we continued uphill and found this wonderful museum. It was definitely worth getting wet for.
Metsovo is a beautiful town in the Pindos mountains and is often called ‘The Jewel of Epirus’. It is a Vlach town, a people who are historically nomadic shepherds who’ve lived in the region for generations and whose origins are from neighbouring Balkan countries.
With a population of shepherds it is only natural that Metsovo would have a culture of weaving. The textiles are utilitarian and are used as household furnishings, blankets, carpets, cushions, all heavily decorated in colorful designs that have spiritual and cultural significance. Other products of the village include the colorful embroidered traditional costumes, including the flokata, a black sleeveless coat or vest with a red band that identified the people from Metsovo during the Ottoman period.
We had our own individual tour round the old house in which the museum is situated. It was owned by a Swiss banker Tositsa who’s family came from the town. The guide told us that the winters were so harsh that the family had to spend seven months of the year inside the house and so had to store enough food to last them throughout the winter.
Here is a link to the Folklore Museum where you can see photographs www.metsovomuseum.gr
The monasteries of Meteora are an amazing sight. There are now six monasteries which are still inhabited. We visited two, the Great Meteora built in 1382 and the Varlaam built in 1517. We set off early in the morning and walked there up a stone path accompanied by a local dog who decided to act as our guide. Once the monastery opened at 9am we then had to ascend a further 300 steps to the main door. Until the road was built the monks reached the monastery by clambering into a net attached to a pulley and were winched up. This was powered by other monks manually turning the wheel (see pictures below).
The churches inside the monasteries were extremely beautiful, the walls and ceilings being completely covered in frescos.
Some of the rooms that could be visited included the old cellars and kitchens.
The monasteries had little museums and these photos come from them. The last is a poster from WWII when the Greeks were fighting off the Italian invasion.
The monasteries are a major tourist attraction and throughout the day coaches arrive with day trippers from all over the world.
There has been a Jewish community in Thessaloniki for over 2,000 years. But after the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella many more Sephardic Jews settled in Thessaloniki (Salonica) significantly increasing the Jewish population. Other Jews emigrated from elsewhere in southern Europe and by the 16 century over 50% of the city’s population were Jewish.
At the beginning of WWII the Jewish population of the city numbered 50,000 (just over one fifth of the population). In 1942 the Nazis destroyed the Jewish cemetery with more than 500,000 tombs. In the spring of 1943 the Jewish population were rounded up and on March 15th the first convoy of Jewish Greeks left Thessaloniki bound for Poland. In 1945 only 1,950 retuned. 96% were murdered in the concentration camps.
The plaque on the powerful statue reads:
“Dedicated by the Greek people to the memory of the 50,000 Jewish Greeks of Thessaloniki, deported from their mother city by the Nazi occupation forces in the spring of 1943 and exterminated in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz/ Birkenau death camps”
The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki was founded to honour the rich and creative Sephardic heritage as it evolved in the city after the 15th century. It is housed in one of the rare Jewish buildings that survived the fire of 1917. It is great that the city has this museum and the exhibitions provide detail of the Sephardic way of life which existed.
Every street you walk down has sculptures and in beautiful locations – by the sea, in squares etc. The first below is the memorial to the Jewish Greeks, the three following relate to Alexandra the Great, the fifth had no plaque but is very powerful and the last ‘Umbrellas’ was placed in 1997 when the city was the European Capital of Culture. I found an App called ‘Strolling around Thessaloniki’ which details many of the sculptures and other sights in the city.
The Archeology museum had some very interesting collections. The photographs below come from ‘The Gold of Macedon’ tracing the use of gold through the ages, most of the artefacts coming from tombs.
This museum is housed in a beautiful old building known as Villa Modiano built in 1906 by the architect Eli Modiano for the banker Jacob Modiano and which survived the great fire of 1917. The collections consist of woven textiles, embroidery, tools etc, plus replicas of the equipment and wooden machinery used in mills to grind flour, pound wool (fulling) and even saw planks of wood.
We spent several delightful hours wandering around the market and bazaar area in the city, it was a vibrant area with whole areas dedicated to particular products as in India.
Revisted Mycenae after having read Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls. Felt we now knew more about Agememnon and the site would be more meaningful. It’s an amazing place and I get a real sense of the past from being there. The beehive tombs are extraordinary pieces of architecture and it must have been so exciting to have discovered them.
The museum contains some good examples of pottery 3000 years old with descriptions of history of the period.
And lastly, we stayed overnight at a camperstop by a cafe just down the road from the site. Very friendly guy running the place. It would have been better if we’d spent less time on breakfast and got to the site earlier, but what a fabulous location
The amphitheatre at Epidaurus is completely stunning
The site of ancient Messini was the former capital of the area founded in 371BC. It is north west of Kalamata in a beautiful location with a well preserved stadium and amphitheatre. It is not so well known as some of the other sites and had very few people. There is a small museum with several statues. Well worth visiting.
Salazar came to power in Portugal through a military coup in 1926 and in 1933 established a “New State” – fascist dictatorship.
The PIDE (political police) played a major role in the state, and the building which houses this museum was used to incarcerate and torture prisoners until the revolution in 1974.
It’s a fantastic multi-media exhibition, going through the whole period, in many ways demonstrating the development of a fascist state.
So many people were murdered or just disappeared during this time and thus museum honours their sacrifice.
There is also a temporary exhibition about José Dias Coelho, an artist and revolutionary who was murdered in 1961. My father knew his family and we went to Portugal in the 60s we used to visit them
Here is a link to a song written to commemorate his life
If you go to Lisbon do visit this museum – it is an education!
We left Sanlucar de Barramada and our visit to Anne and Neil’s lovely house and entered Portugal, travelling to Evora, the capital of Alentejo, a place I’d visited many years ago in the 60s and 70s and has remained in my memory ever since.
Evora is a medieval walled town. It was a centre of trade during the time of the Moors and had its hey-day in the 14 to 16 centuries when it was favoured by the House of Avis, as well as artists and scholars. Then in 1580 Spain seized the throne, the royal court left and the town started to waste away. Its very fine old centre has been left undeveloped.
The narrow windy streets have white washed houses with either blue or ochra painted around the windows and doors.
Towering in the old town is the Templo Romano which is said to be a temple to Diana. It’s extremely well preserved and was apparently walled up in the Middle Ages to form a small fortress and then used as the town slaughterhouse! It’s pretty impressive. Throughout the whole Alentejo region you can find loads of Roman remains.
The Termas Romanas is easy to miss as it’s inside the local town hall. It was only discovered in 1987, includes a nine meter laconicum (steam room), and in 1994 they discovered an open air swimming pool! It’s quite surreal as you go into the town hall and there’s the laconicum and there are windows into people’s offices so you can look across and see them working and of course they have a window into Roman times.
All over Alentejo they have quite recently discovered both Roman and Moorish artefacts when carrying out developments.
The Capela dos Ossos is a very strange place. It’s within the Igreja de São Francisco and is a room lined with the bones and skulls of about 5000 people. It’s said it was the solution to overflowing graveyards decided upon by three 17-century Franciscan monks. It’s fairly creepy.
The Igreja de São João is a beautiful little church and well worth a visit. It has extraordinary azulejos(wall tiles) from the 18-C. It also has an underworld of an ossuary full of monks bones, and a deep Moorish cistern.
We stayed in the campsite on edge of town. It’s one of those quite old tired campsites but it was perfectly ok and an easy 20 minute walk into town. There was also a sports area nearby where we could go for a pleasant morning jog!
