GREECE IS | KASTELLORIZO | 2020

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KASTELLORIZO

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ISSN: 2529-041X

ISSUE #45 | 2020 EDITION

06 - 29

A R R I VA L

A reporter’s first impressions of Kastellorizo; a colorful up-close look through the lens at some of the island’s special little treasures.

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IN D E P TH

A tumultous history of wars and devastation; a legacy of cultural and architectural traditions; and the magic of “Mediterraneo.“

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Beautiful and welcoming, Kastellorizo is a perfect vacation spot and the right place to create fascinating friendships.

Kazzies forever: the inspiring past and the dynamic present of the Kastellorizian community in Australia.

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WELCOME

“AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE NATION” For the president of the Hellenic Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, her recent visit to Kastellorizo was a profoundly moving experience. Here, she explains what she gleaned from the island’s stoic resistance in the face of adversity.

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President Sakellaropoulou lays a wreath on the tomb of Despina Achladiotou, “The Lady of Ro,” whose unfaltering patriotic pride and sense of national duty continues to inspire others.

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astellorizo is not just a painting tossed in the sea, a small island that fascinates with its exceptional natural beauty. It is a place of uninterrupted Greekness with a history that stretches back through the ages; a place that was conquered, pillaged and destroyed time and again over the course of the centuries, yet always rose from the ashes, thanks to the determination and moral mettle of its residents. It is a place that kept its religion and language, its mores and traditions intact, as sundry conquerors swept across its land.

Located on the far fringes of our nation, small but with a weighty history, it may be called by the name it was given during the ascendancy of the Order of the Knights of Saint John, but officially it still holds its ancient name: Megisti, or “The Greatest.”

And what an apt name it is, too. As poet Odysseas Elytis says in one wonderful line, “Things obey their name.” It is, indeed, a great island and always has been, because it embodies the notion of patriotism in the best possible way. I was deeply moved to see our flag waving all over the island, flying proudly, even painted on the rocks. I saw in the residents’ faces the resolve, the unconquerable conviction, the self-respect and optimism with which they face the future.

I visited Kastellorizo to mark the island’s liberation from German occupation, 77 years to the day the warship “Navarchos

Kountouriotis” sailed into its port even though war still raged across Europe.

My visit was necessary for many reasons.

First was the critical situation created by Turkish aggression in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, and the rhetoric emanating from the neighboring country seeking to cut the island off from the rest of Greece. The second reason – and the most important – is the island’s enduring symbolic significance and the message it conveys to all Greeks. Kastellorizo is an integral and valued part of the nation.

Every stone tells a tale of heroism and love of country, and together all these tales form the strong fabric of national confidence which inspires the Kastellorizians of today in their battle to keep this age-old cradle of Hellenism alive. It is a battle that is evident in their most mundane activities, in their creative drive, in their dynamism and spirit. And what moved me most was that their sense of patriotism does not depend on rivalry with the Turkish people. The Kastellorizians do not regard the sea as an impassable frontier, but as a channel of communication. Their ties to the adjacent coast are not restricted to commercial interests but extend to bonds of amity and shared cultural events. Proud to be Greek, proud of their nation, they will not cower and will not be frightened. Their grit, courage, dignity and strength should serve as an example to all of us.

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© BASIL ZEMPILAS

WELCOME

ABOVE ITS WEIGHT Kastellorizo may be small, but it’s the size of the heart, of the spirit, and of the commitment that counts.

BY GIORG O S T SI RO S A N D NATA SH A BL AT SIOU

Kastellorizo ranks 89th among Greece’s islands in terms of area, and 65th in terms of population. Yet if there were an index measuring historical or symbolic weight per square meter, it would almost certainly rank first. And if we were to add to its population the huge community of diaspora Kastellorizians – or Kazzies, as they’re known in Australia – who number around 80,000-100,000, visiting whenever they can and maintaining profound emotional connections with their ancestral land, we would be talking about Greece’s fifth most populous island.

History, however, is not written with “ifs”, and these numbers are just a small illustration of how special Kastellorizo is.

Showcasing all of its distrinct qualities is what we have tried to do over the 140 pages of this issue, a special collector’s edition created by Kathimerini, and Greece Is. In this effort, we drew upon the invaluable assistance of experts, researchers and friends of the island – from places as near as Italy and as far-flung as Australia – who so generously shared their knowledge, rare photographs from their collections and, most importantly, their thoughts, memories and deeply personal stories.

Through our research, visits to the island and hours of conversation with locals and émigrés, we also came to realize that tiny

Kastellorizo, which resembles an idyllic film setting (and indeed has been one), basically encapsulates Greece as a whole: with its historical and cultural continuity; the challenge of surviving on a rock in the middle of the sea; its triumphs and woes; the conquests and the emigrations of its people; its commercial prowess and cosmopolitanism; and, above all, the pride of all those who live in or hail from a place that has always “punched above its weight,” to borrow the phrase that Andrew Liveris, a renowned industrialist, chairman of the Hellenic Initiative and third-generation Kastellorizian, used in his interview.

It’s also true that Kastellorizo has many pressing needs, and that the Greek state needs to appreciate the island’s vital role within the nation and to translate this appreciation into tangible and sustained assistance. The government must furnish practical support in the form of infrastructure projects and through concerted endeavours to raise the profile of this most remote point of Greece.

We hope that this special issue of Greece Is, will make its own small contribution to showcasing the natural beauty and the cultural importance of this dauntless “Rock” that continues to stand guard, as it always has, at Greece’s easternmost edge.

A newly-married Perth Kazzie and his wife, with wedding guests, posing for the now-customary photograph in front of the Santrape School on Kastellorizo.

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CONTENTS GREECE IS - ISSUE#45 K ASTELLORIZO 2020

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93 06. YOU ARE HERE Kastellorizo on the map 08. EYEWITNESS A reporter on assignment in turbulent times 18. CLOSE-UP Colorful details that make up the island’s charming mosaic 30. TIMELINE Riches, ruins and rebirth

50. HAUTE COUTURE The art of dressing up on Kastellorizo 56. ARCHITECTURE A unique style of domestic construction 62. LIFE IN BLACK AND WHITE Rare photos tell stories from the early 20th century

32. EASTERN GATEKEEPER The epic history of Kastellorizo

70. THE LADY OF RO Despina Achladiotou, the woman who raised the Greek flag

46. WHERE IS KASTELLORIZO? A complex geopolitical situation, simplified

74. MEDITERRANEO A tribute to the Oscar-winning film that made Kastellorizo famous

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EXECUTIVE EDITOR Alexis Papahelas EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Giorgos Tsiros

editor@greece-is.com COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR Vassiliki Albani

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78. DESTINATION KZS The grand tour of the island 90. THE BIG BLUE Swim, dive, and feel reborn 96. SUMMER’S GIFTS Kastellorizo through the eyes of its faithful summer guests 104. CARRYING ON Kastellorizians have always been equal to any challenge.

112. BEYOND BORDERS How Kastellorizo acquired its own international documentary festival 116. THE BAREFOOT SCULPTOR

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Diaspora

118. TRANSNATIONAL CITIZENS The (re)creation of Kastellorizian identity in Perth, Australia.

124. ANDREW LIVERIS How Kastellorizo shaped a global power player 130. THE KAZZIES A tale of cultural endurance 134. VOICES FROM AUSTRALIA 140. HOME AND AWAY Growing up Kazzie, ending up Kastellorizian 144. SWEET TREAT

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ON THE COVER: The colorful houses of Kastellorizo, at once elegant and quaint, are an essential ingredient of the island’s bewitching charm.

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

YOU ARE HERE

Kastellorizo, or, as it is officially called, Megisti, is the easternmost point of Greece and belongs to the island group of the Dodecanese. It is the largest island (approx. 9 sq km) of the Kastellorizo (Megisti) complex, which includes 14 islands and islets that belong to Greece, and several other islets that belong to Turkey. The island of Kastellorizo is located 1.25 nautical miles from the southwest coast of Asia Minor and 72 nautical miles from Rhodes.

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ILLUSTRATION: ANNA TZORTZI

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EYEWITNESS

IT HAPPENED LAST SUMMER Tired of being noticed only when international tensions boil over, locals on Greece’s easternmost territory are eager to share their island with anyone who respects them for who they are.

BY M A RGA R I TA P OU R NA R A / P HOTOS: N I KOS KOK K A L I A S

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Father Christos Symeonidis is Kastellorizo’s new priest, who moved on the island just a short while ago.

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ather Giorgos’ prayers drifted out of the tiny Church of Aghios Panteleimonas, dispersing into the wind like incense, over the faithful gathered in the cool Kastellorizo churchyard, among the trees and prickly pears. His murmurs became one with the quiet chatter of the congregation, the laughter of children and playful banter – every generation present on the eve of the feast day for the all-merciful Saint Panteleimon, healer of souls. Such religious occasions bring together the few hundred locals who aren’t, however, the only ones on this island – just a few meters away, a group of National Guard 10

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soldiers stood by, paying their respects, their berets removed, their necks, faces and arms scorched by the sun. All of them were Cretans, from villages in Irakleio.

Many of the older women blessed themselves instinctively at the sight of the soldiers. One walked up to them: “Thank you, boys, for looking after us,” she said in a tender whisper, pressing communion bread into their hands, the humblest expression of the islanders’ gratitude. Outside the fence, the god Dionysus was running the show as rows of pork souvlaki roasted on charcoal grills and dozens of cans of beer chilled in icepacked styrofoam coolers.

A cluster of ruins near the church marks the location of the island’s ancient capital, Paliokastro. You can see everything from its crumbling walls. Turkey is so close you can almost reach out and touch it. The narrow strait is dotted with uninhabited islets, big and small.

In tranquil times, only fishermen can say with any precision where the border lies on the untroubled sea. As the sun started to set, the woman beside me made a video call to her cousins in Australia to show them the idyllic scene over her phone: “What a shame you’re in lockdown! I wish you could be here to see how beautiful it is!”

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Most of the island’s émigrés could not visit as usual this summer. Flight restrictions imposed because of the pandemic canceled the annual pilgrimage home – more Kastellorizians live in Australia and the US than on their ancestral island.

Kastellorizo is one of Greece’s most enchanting destinations; the first sight of the main town takes your breath away.

The port is perfectly geometrical, like an open-ended rectangle, with a row of brightly painted houses – a scene of Lilliputian perfection. Every power that has ever passed through here sought to conquer it, but it never lost its Greek spirit. With 250 permanent residents and

a constant military presence, it is a tiny island community of enormous geostrategic importance for the country. Thanks to Kastellorizo, Greece has the right to a continental shelf – and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – that would meet that of Cyprus, limiting the reach of Turkey, which persistently challenges the provisions of international law.

The “outpost” of Kastellorizo found itself at the center of international attention during this summer’s spike in tensions between Greece and Turkey, which also resulted in mock dogfights over the island that scared off many tourists but brought the media flocking

01. A SAOS Ferries vessel carried passengers and vehicles free of charge between Rhodes and Kastellorizo several times a week over the summer.

02. At the festival of Aghios Panteleimonas, at a chapel near the airport.

03. Soldiers from Irakleio, Crete are stationed at the base on Kastellorizo.

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01 01. Childhood on the island can be idyllic, but educational opportunities and career choices are limited.

02. The sign reads “Union for the Revival of Megisti – Home office Sydney, Australia.”

in. The residents appreciate the interest shown by the networks, but believe they often cultivate a negative climate. As for government representatives, they only appear on occasions like this and don’t seem to bother with the islanders’ more immediate concerns, such as problems with ferry connections, shortages of medicines and a serious scarcity of teachers that threatens their children’s academic performance. The remote community of Kastellorizo feels visible only when there are problems with Turkey.

One local man who spoke on condition of anonymity summed up the situation: “Here’s the thing with Kastellorizo,” he said, as he slowly sipped a cup of Greek coffee, looking out at the Turkish coastal town of Kaş across the way.

“When the television stations show the weather forecast for Greece, Kastellorizo isn’t even on the map. It doesn’t fit in the frame. ‘Big deal,’ you might say. But as soon as there’s trouble with the Turks, we magically appear on all the TV stations’ maps, this time complete with a continen12

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tal shelf and an EEZ. What am I trying to say? That maybe the Greeks should be reminded that we are here, too, in this tiny corner, every day of the year. Yes, we’re far away, a dot, but we’re defending Thermopylae here. It’s a shame we’re only mentioned when there are problems with the neighbors, because life is tough here and the winter always brings a lot of problems – especially so this year, as we’ve had little revenue from tourism.”

A PERFECT STORM FOR TOURISM In normal years, the money made over the tourism season is enough to sustain the locals for the rest of the year. Apart from tourism and small revenues from the military personnel posted here all year round, the islanders have no income from farming or livestock. The only activity

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that has brought them any real money in recent years is the sale of traditional houses, mainly to wealthy Italians who spend the entire summer here.

This year, of course, was the perfect storm: the Kastellorizians in Australia were unable to come, the pandemic stopped the arrival of day cruises from Turkey and tourists from other destinations, and concerns about tensions in the area drove off most Greeks who might otherwise have gone there this summer.

“The situation with Turkey put us in a very difficult position and is a constant source of concern. I hope a solution can be found because living like this wears you down,” Deputy Mayor Stratos Amygdalos told us. He hastened to add: “We have an excellent relationship with the residents of Kaş. We are twinned with them and traditional commercial ties

“WE HAVE AN EXCELLENT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE RESIDENTS OF KAS. WE ARE TWINNED WITH THEM AND TRADITIONAL COMMERCIAL TIES STRETCH BACK THROUGH THE AGES. BEYOND THIS FRIENDSHIP, THOUGH, THERE IS SOMETHING CALLED THE NATION.” – STRATOS AMYGDALOS, DEPUTY MAYOR

The Greek flag flies over Castello Rosso, the castle that gave the island its name.

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stretch back through the ages. Beyond this friendship, though, there is something called the nation. In our hearts, we can make this distinction. As far as this year goes, the state must give us some support because we’re going to need it. We’re accustomed to hardship, but there’s always something missing. Right now, for example, we have quite a few specialist doctors, but we need a general practitioner. We need infrastructure and investment for the island to grow.”

The state is not entirely deaf to these

demands either, as evidenced by the visit, in mid-September, of Katerina Sakellaropoulou, president of the Hellenic Republic, when she joined celebrations marking the island’s liberation from Italian occupation.

I asked around where we could get a good meal and was sent to the taverna Platania, best known from a scene in the award-winning WWII film “Mediterraneo,” starring Greek actress Vana Barba and directed by Italy’s Gabriele Salvatores. Photographs of the actors

“IT’S THE LAST PIECE OF GREECE OUT HERE IN THE EAST. ANYONE WHO VISITS KASTELLORIZO IS BOUND TO COME DOWN WITH THE SAME AFFLICTION, THE AFFLICTION OF SPENDING ALL DAY JUST LOOKING AT THE SEA AND NEVER GETTING TIRED OF IT.” – KATERINA STOURAITI-MEZZEDIMI, HONORARY GREEK CONSUL TO DJIBOUTI

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adorn the wall behind the till. The public square where the taverna is located is “old Greece” in its most archetypal form: a pretty church, a stately school built with money from an overseas benefactor and the shaded taverna tables in the middle.

You can add to that a plate of stuffed vine leaves scorched just so from the bottom of the pan, a cold beer soothing the throat, and the songs of legendary Greek singer Vicky Moscholiou mixing with the chirping cicadas.

Owner Katerina Magiafi was everywhere at once, apron tightly wrapped around her waist, taking care of everything. She believes that every Greek has a duty to visit Kastellorizo at least once in their lifetime, like a sacred pilgrimage. “Our compatriots should be coming here, giving us their support, not going to Mykonos, which has no need.

Their presence is necessary; it makes us feel safe. Our territory is being challenged by them over there and we want to hang onto it, tooth and nail. No matter what the journalists say on television, all

EYEWITNESS

Are we so alike? “No. They have their ways, we have ours. It’s the difference of religion,” she said, as she called into the kitchen to bring us a plate of delicious goat, the island specialty. “The food only comes out well if you love cooking. I wake up happy about going into the kitchen every morning,” she said, before dashing off to get back to her pots and pans.

For centuries, Kastellorizo has had close ties with Kaş, which is just a few kilometers away and certainly much nearer than Rhodes, which is 127 kilometers away. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, the trip across was a simple thing for both Greeks and Turks, a 20-minute journey from one coast to the other. Tour-

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01. With almost no vehicles on the island, the streets are safe places for children to play.

02. Katerina Stouraiti-Mezzedimi is a Kastellorizo native and the Honorary Consul of Greece in Djibouti.

03. Tsikos Magiafis and his Turkish wife Hurigul run the taverna at the island’s most popular swimming spot.

the tragic news, we are the rocks on this rock; we’re not going anywhere; we won’t abandon it,” she said.

With evident pride, she recounted an incident from the previous March: “It was the anniversary of the unification of the Dodecanese Islands with Greece and the military jets flew overhead for what we call their usual greeting. I ran outside as soon I heard the sound. I always have the Greek flag on my balcony and another one inside the house just in case.

“I looked into the sky and saw that the jets also had the Greek flag painted on their tails. ‘It’s our guys! Hurry!’ I

shouted, as I grabbed the flag, unfurled it and started waving it to the pilots. The boys saw me because they were flying low. They were wild with joy. On their second pass – they always do three – they flew above me and gave a spin. The entire neighborhood was out clapping; it was crazy down here. What a beautiful moment! We all felt such pride! It gives us such joy and strength to see the jets.

‘They remembered us and came,’ I tell myself. I even have it on video on Facebook. Maria, come over and show her the video,” she called out to her daughter, who brought me her iPad. What is the relationship like with the neighbors in Kaş? “There’s no rancor or animosity. We are and always will be friends. Now, with the events of the summer, they would call us up and say: ‘Don’t be afraid. We’re with you. We love you and will support you from this end.

Is there anything we can do for you?’

There’s no reason why our two peoples should not get along,” said Magiafi.

I couldn’t help myself and had to ask:

ists and yachts sailed back and forth all day long, and many Kastellorizians would go across to buy cheaper basic goods and vegetables. But COVID shut down the border and halted travel links, at a significant economic and psychological cost to both sides. Even though Kastellorizo has a well-equipped medical center and doctors to provide basic services, the locals have often chosen to seek treatment for more serious cases in Turkey rather than wait for a medevac from Rhodes.

Giorgos Karagiannis is one of the locals who often makes the trip across to Kaş on touring boats and knows the waters here like the back of his hand. “Our relationship with our neighbors is great.

It’s politicians who make problems, not ordinary folk. We’re used to the mock dogfights and the tension, so we’re not afraid. The presence of the army makes us feel safe and ready if something were to happen, of course,” he told us as his boat headed towards the island’s famous Blue Cave. The entrance to the cavern is K A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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so low that boat passengers need to lie down on the floor of the vessel. But it’s worth it; the darkness inside is pierced by a blue light so bright and beautiful you want to dive in to grab it.

The island’s sole beach with facilities can only be reached by boat as well.

Located on the islet of Aghios Giorgos, it has sun loungers and a small taverna popular with the journalists visiting the island to cover the recent Greek-Turkish crisis. One reason is that the taverna’s owner, Tsikos Magiafis, has been married to Hurigul, from Kaş, since 2012. “Our marriage has brought our people closer together,” said the 35-year-old Greek man. He met his wife on a two-day excursion to the Turkish coast. “As soon as we started going out, I went to meet her family and she came to meet mine. We decided to live here on Kastellorizo but we go across all the time so that our son can visit his grandparents,” he added.

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journalists of when the borders might reopen. She hadn’t seen her family since March. “The Turks love Kastellorizo as a travel destination because they have a good time, they eat well and they like the clean waters,” the young woman said.

Not a single Greek television crew that came to the island to cover the recent crisis failed to ask her for an interview.

Tsikos comments on his wife’s sudden popularity with good humor: “She’s used to it now. We’ve even been in a two-page spread in the Turkish daily ‘Hurriyet’ and other foreign media. My family and the local community have never had a problem with my marriage, but I have recently been reading some really aggressive and ignorant comments by Greeks against the Turks, and it makes me very sad.”

Our last stop was to the home of Katerina Stouraiti-Mezzedimi. The Honorary Greek Consul in Djibouti hails from Kastellorizo on her grandmother’s side but has spent most of her life in Africa and is married to an Italian architect. Her Greek is inflected with that undulating accent

Harborside tables add to the charm of an evening meal out.

that makes it sound so beautiful to the ear. Why should people visit the island, I asked her? “It is the last, tiny piece of Greece out here in the East. But there’s another reason: anyone who visits Kastellorizo is bound to come down with the same affliction, as I like to call it. It’s the affliction of spending all day just looking at the sea and never getting tired of it.

It’s like watching a film. Weeks can go by and you won’t want to do anything else.”

Her comment brought my Santorinian grandmother to mind, and I remembered her looking out at the sea and the sky with complete concentration from morning to night. I suddenly realized that this was something I’d inherited from her. And that’s yet another marvelous thing about Kastellorizo, that it allows you to practice the wonderful Greek skill of looking at the sea and just letting life flow past.

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A REFUGE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

Lying at the crossroads of trade and of war, Kastellorizo has provided opportunity and safe haven for millennia. This stark silhouette of a structure originally built for defense exemplifies the protection this island provided and needed. Today, however, the building plays a cultural role; it’s home to the island’s fascinating Archaeological Museum.

CLOSE-UP GALLERY

Kastellorizo presents a kaleidoscope of eye-pleasing images that help the visitor understand its unique character and complex history.

BY N IC HOL A S BOGI AT Z I S / P HOTOS: N I KOS P I L OS

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POWERFUL SYMBOLS

This opulent but fragile banner survives as another reminder of the island’s turbulent political and social history. The stone city was destroyed over decades of mayhem, yet symbolic ephemera were carefully protected. Meanwhile, this elaborate door knocker (right) in the shape of an elegant hand continues to represent the island’s time-honored and renowned hospitality.

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BRILLIANT AND ABUNDANT

Color distinguished and distinguishes Kastellorizo. The rich palette of old continues to spill onto walls today in the eye-pleasing exteriors that draw travelers.

The characteristic “loulaki” blue of old still finds its place in the indulgent use of color that plays with the island’s light.

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THE MASTERS OF ALL THEY SURVEY

Closed shutters and empty chairs signal the quiet calm of the afternoon siesta, when the well-managed cat population asserts its place as a key element of the island’s charm. Meanwhile, the disparate array of outdoor furniture in lanes and along the waterfront reflects the relaxed al fresco life that’s embraced by locals and visitors alike.

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© COURTESY OF NICHOLAS C. BOGIATZIS

OPULENCE THROUGH TRADE

From all directions, the island’s wealthy traders brought lavish goods which they used to adorn their homes and their families. Chains of gold coins nestled against the rich silks of a woman’s “kavadi” or kaftan, shown here. Children were protected and blessed with amulets adorned with the gold coins of trade.

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AN EYE TO HEAVEN

This interplay of lines in the ceiling of the cathedral of Kastellorizo does more than reflect light. Architecturally, it reflects the influence on the island’s churches of the European Gothic style, yet another manifestation of Kastellorizo’s position as a cultural crossroads. Beneath the simple strength of the lines, richly carved and painted stone embellishes the cathedral’s sumptuous interior.

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29 © COURTESY OF NICHOLAS C. BOGIATZIS

TIMELINE

RICHES, RUINS, REBIRTH Its key position within the complex landscape of the eastern Mediterranean meant Kastellorizo would seldom cease being a subject of contentious outside powers.

© GENNADIOS LIBRARY THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS

B Y VA S S I L I S M I N A K A K I S

1306-1309

PREHISTORIC ERA It’s likely that Late Mesolithic and Neolithic migrants and settlers passed through and had a presence on the island, although no archaeological evidence for this has yet been found.

LATE BRONZE AGE The island’s first permanent inhabitation may have occurred during this period. Two Bronze Age shipwrecks (14th and 12th century BC) discovered in the vicinity show Kastellorizo already lay on important East-West shipping routes.

8th-5th CENTURY BC

164 BC

Kastellorizo falls under the expanding regional influence and authority of Rhodes, eventually becoming one of its key naval bases and a flourishing commercial crossroads within its territory, the Rhodian Peraea.

The island falls under Roman authority after Rhodes concedes its regional powers to Rome.

450-400 BC Kastellorizo’s defenses are established or greatly strengthened. Paliokastro’s fortress, the foundations of the harborside castle and the ornate Lycian tomb below it date to this era.

188 BC Rhodes’ regional dominance is supported by Rome in the Treaty of Apamea.

166 BC Now wishing to temper the competing naval and economic might of Rhodes and the Rhodian Peraea, the Romans declare the island of Delos to be a free port. It soon takes over as the Aegean’s main commercial clearinghouse for Eastern and Western goods.

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The Knights of Saint John occupy the island while campaigning to take over Rhodes, which they successfully do by 1309. On Kastellorizo, now known to Europeans as Castello Rosso (formerly Megisti), they establish the imposing castle (c. 1380) overlooking the port.

4th-7th CENTURIES Early Christian churches are built on Kastellorizo. With the rise of Constantinople, the island eventually becomes part of the Byzantine Empire.

15th-EARLY 16th CENTURIES Catastrophic raids are carried out by the Egyptian Mamluks (1440, 1444) and Ottomans (1480). Meanwhile, Kastellorizo is ruled by the Crown of Aragon and its successor states.

© NATIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUM

© © THE LATE KATERINA SPEROS

TIMELINE

1523 The Ottomans seize all the Dodecanese Islands. They lose Kastellorizo to the Venetians in 1570, but recapture it in 1635. A French-Venetian force briefly occupies the island in 1659, but cannot hold on to it.

1913

1921

An uprising breaks out, as Kastellorizians demand unification with Greece. Their pleas are not met. Instead, France occupies the island in December of 1915. Turkish bombardment during World War I causes extensive damage.

Further waves of emigration follow.

France cedes Kastellorizo to Italy. Economic hardship leads to more emigration, but also to violent protests (the “Mouzahres”, 1934), led mainly by women, against a crippling tax hike and a corrupt mayor.

© NATIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUM

18th CENTURY At last, in an era of relative calm, Kastellorizo begins to flourish anew as a shipping and commercial base. The island’s Greek inhabitants also establish communities on the opposite coast of Asia Minor.

The Kastellorizians’ increasing prosperity is undeterred even by the violent raid of the pirate Lambros Katsonis (1788), who briefly besieges and forces the surrender of the island’s Ottoman garrison.

WORLD WAR II (1941-1945) Fighting between the British and the Italians (1941-43), heavy German bombing (1943) and a massive fire (1944) wreak havoc on Kastellorizo and force the remaining inhabitants to flee. Their eventual homecoming is marked by further tragedy, as a returning refugee ship (SS Empire Patrol) catches fire, resulting in loss of life and numerous injuries.

1970s 1821

1835

The people of Kastellorizo take part in the Greek Revolution.

They aren’t included in the resulting modern Greek state, however, as their island remains under the Ottomans’ thumb for nearly another century.

Sultan Mahmud II grants Kastellorizians self-governance and some tax relief. A period of great prosperity follows; the island becomes a dynamic shipping center and its population expands. Luxurious houses and numerous churches are erected. Many of its privileges are later revoked, however, following the start of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, and Kastellorizo’s first waves of emigration begin.

Tourism makes a tentative start; a few Italians and Australians with Kastellorizian roots express interest in buying and restoring old houses.

7 MARCH 1948 Kastellorizo is formally integrated into Greece.

Over subsequent decades, Kastellorizo slowly enters a new phase of peace and prosperity.

1992 “Mediterraneo” is awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, showcasing the island’s untouched beauty to a global audience.

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HISTORY

EASTERN GATEKEEPER

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© NIKOLAS LEVENTAKIS/ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF KASTELLORIZO/MINISTRY OF CULTURE & SPORTS, PREFECTURE OF DODECANESE

Detail of a sarcophagus, with a portrait of the deceased and an Eros figure; 1st c. AD.

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lthough continuously inhabited for at least 28 centuries, Kastellorizo has a fitful archaeological record: some occupational periods are well represented, while others have left little or no trace.

The island’s past offers us something larger, however, as archaeologist Fotini Zervaki of the 22nd Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities observes: “It reflects the important geographical position and the economic and strategic significance of the entire region.”

In the millennia-long, pre-modern age of the sailing ship, the island found itself in the midst of an all-important sea route along the southern Anatolian shore which connected the East with the West. It also lay at an interface between Greek civilization and the distinct cultures of Asia Minor. As a result, it was consistently exploited as a military and commercial base, a key maritime port-of-call.

Its history of fluctuating fortunes is a direct result of its attractiveness to outside powers. Kastellorizo flourished, comments Zervaki, especially “when some central authority needed organized control over the sea passages.”

The story of Kastellorizo is a tale of fluctuations, struggles, a great flowering and quiet obscurity.

BY JOHN LEONA R D

BY ANY OTHER NAME… The name “Kastellorizo” inspires visions of an island fortress. Indeed, its distinctive, time-worn defenses on the northeast coast gave rise to its current appellation – a Greek corruption of the medieval Italian “Castello Rosso” (“Red Castle”).

From the 12th century, Castello Rosso became a familiar place for early travelers, traders and adventurers.

Prior to the arrival of Venetian and other Italian merchants, Kastellorizo had been known as Megiste (or Megisti) in ancient Greek – as we know both from historical sources and an inscription, first discovered by Charles Cockerell during his 1812 visit, carved into the rock below the castle.

Megisti first appears in ancient literature around 330 BC, when the island, along with various Lycian coastal cities and ports of call, is mentioned in a navigational guide by Pseudo-Skylax: “Telmissos…Xanthos…Patera…Phellos…; off these places is an island of the Rhodians, Megiste.”

The Roman historian Livy describes the naval importance of Megisti’s port during Rome’s struggle against Antiochus III, Macedonian king of the Seleucid Empire, in the Fourth Syrian War (190 BC).

Although the Rhodians supported the Romans, one of their admirals, Polyxenidas, had gone over to the Macedonians. Faced with Ephesus’ evenK A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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tual surrender, Livy recounts, Polyxenidas set sail for Syria, but was so wary of the Rhodian fleet stationed at Megiste that he landed west of the island at Patara and continued his eastward journey by land.

PROPITIOUS GEOGRAPHY The ancient name refers to Megisti being “the largest” island of the surrounding archipelago of 30 smaller islets and reefs. Located about 130km east of Rhodes and about 2km from Anatolia, Megisti offered ships protection in several natural bays: a double harbor on its northeast side – today the main (Kavos) and smaller (Mandraki) ports – separated by Cape Kavos; and a third, western inlet, Limenari, useful when the winds shift. Inland, the mountainous terrain features three main peaks, Vigla (273m), Paliokastro (244m) and Mounta (230m), which likely were well-known landmarks for approaching sailors. Lying outside the Aegean, Megisti/Kastellorizo represents the easternmost and smallest of the main Dodecanese Islands. Its proximity to the 34

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Lycian coastline, flanked by key maritime centers including Patara, Antiphellos (now Kaş), Aperlae and Myra, made the island a useful offshore base, a launching-off point for the mainland and an East-West gatekeeper.

WANDERERS, MERCHANTS AND NAVAL STRATEGISTS Prior to the dawn of the Neolithic era in the 7th millennium BC, Mesolithic people were already migrating between Asia Minor and the Aegean region, where the Dodecanese islands became stepping stones for both westbound and eastbound travelers. During Neolithic times, these wanderers became Kastellorizo’s first hunters, farmers and settlers, judging from sparse traces of chipped and ground stone tools.

By the Late Bronze Age, cultures and commerce had greatly advanced all around the eastern Mediterranean. Local and international traders were already plying the sea routes along the southern Anatolian shore – as indicated by two sunken sailing vessels of the late 14th and 12th centuries BC, discovered not far from Kastellorizo at Ulu Burun and Cape Gelidonya. Prehistoric pottery fragments unearthed in Kastellorizo’s modern cem-

etery, on the small cape east of Mandraki, point to the possible existence there of a harborside settlement.

During Geometric and Archaic times, the island’s residents occupied high Paliokastro, where representative pottery fragments are found. Megisti’s fate during the Persian Wars remains uncertain, but Anatolian influence was clearly felt on the island, as shown by the naiskos-like Lycian tomb with its Ionic façade (late 4th c. BC) carved into the cliff below the later medieval castle. Greek war ships of the Delian and Athenian Leagues sailing to/ from Persian-dominated Cyprus in 478 and 451 BC may have stopped over in Megisti for supplies.

The second half of the 4th century BC witnessed great development in Megisti.

Its first fortress may have been built on Kavos, where a preexisting tower underlying the medieval castle can be distinguished by its distinct pyramidal base, datable to Late Classical/Early Hellenistic times. A multi-towered fortress was also erected on Paliokastro.

SERVING MIGHTY RHODES Megisti’s destiny became intertwined with that of powerful Rhodes during the Classical and especially Hellenistic pe-

© MINISTRY OF CULTURE & SPORTS, EPHORATE OF ANTIQUITIES OF DODECANESE

© NIKOS PILOS

The 4th c. BC fortress at Paliokastro, which had multiple towers and a commading view over Kastellorizo’s port and sea lanes.

© NIKOS PILOS

riods. After founding Phaselis on the Anatolian coast in 690 BC, the Rhodians would naturally have exploited the island as a convenient way station en route to their new colony. Pseudo-Skylax’s Late Classical reference to “Rhodian Megiste” confirms that Megisti had become an important naval base within the Rhodian Peraia. This Rhodian “empire” overcame external pressures from the Persians, the Hekatomnids of Halicarnassus, and Alexander the Great’s successors, eventually being acknowledged by Rome as a regional authority in the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC).

With Rhodes emerging as a major military and commercial sea power during the 3rd and 2nd c. BC, Megisti was designated the seat of an “epistates”: a resident Rhodian military commander of a garrison. Six epistates inscriptions have been found on the island, all reputedly of the 2nd c. BC. Rome soon realized that Rhodes was an economic rival needing to be tamed.

In 166 BC, the new free port of Delos began to eclipse Rhodes as a maritime trade center. Two years later, recognizing its fate under Rome, Rhodes signed a treaty accepting its new status as a “free and allied city.” With Megisti, it carried

on as a key commercial base and naval station in the Roman East.

MEGISTI’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE Although sparse, Megisti’s ancient archaeological remains, ranging from mountaintop towers to low reservoirs and sunken breakwaters, tell a tale of defense, industry and adaptation. The epicenter of life was Megisti’s northeastern double harbor – now overlooked by the remains of the 14th c. Castle of the Knights of St. John – which seems to have functioned primarily for the sheltering, provisioning and repair of passing ships. No walled town existed on the island. Instead, a Late Classical/Early Hellenistic tower rose above the Kavos port, perhaps on the site of an earlier tower. The main quarters for the island’s military garrisons may have been the large Paliokastro fortress (about 6,000sq.m). This strategic citadel had four bastions along its southeastern wall. An internal tower still stands about 4m in height. Ceramic evidence shows Paliokastro was probably also a pre-Classical acropolis. On adjacent Mt Vigla, a 60m-long polygonal-masonry wall, previously characterized as “Cyclopean” and “Mycenaean,” may actually have formed

WITH RHODES EMERGING AS A MAJOR MILITARY AND COMMERCIAL SEA POWER, MEGISTI WAS DESIGNATED THE SEAT OF AN “EPISTATES”: A RESIDENT RHODIAN MILITARY COMMANDER OF A GARRISON.

Façade of the Lycian-style tomb carved into the cliff face below the Knights’ Castle on Cape Kavos; Late Classical/Early Hellenistic, 4th c. BC. K A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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01. Torso of a youth, representative of the idealized anatomy favored

by Classical sculptors; from a marble grave stele; 400-350 BC. 02. An intricately carved grave stele, with an ornate, temple-like naiskos, funeral scene and inscription; 3rd-4th c. AD. 03. Golden funerary wreath with ivy leaves, from an Early Hellenistic tomb on Kastellorizo; late 4th-early 3rd c. BC.

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part of the Rhodian garrison’s inland defenses, Zervaki contends, as “this type of masonry was quite common in Caria from the Classical until the Roman period.”

The Paliokastro fortress allowed a commanding view over Megisti’s northeastern ports, the western Limenari anchorage and the vital shipping lanes below. It represented the center of a network of smaller beacon towers located on the island, the islets of Ro and Strongyli and the Lycian coast opposite. Today, a modern lighthouse (1870) still marks the island of Strongyli; it’s distinguished for being Greece’s easternmost building.

Ancient daily life is attested all around Kastellorizo by small, rural, fortified Hellenistic and Roman or Byzantine farmsteads. Wine-pressing and olive-crushing installations (pressing surfaces, collection basins) are found at these sites and in isolated spots. Amphorae and pithos (large storage jar) fragments date these production sites from Archaic through Roman times. Many rock-cut cisterns, including nine large circular basins at Acheres west of the port, indicate rainwater was precious, while ancient wells exist only beside the main harbor near Aghios Georgios tou Pigadiou. Rock-cut graves are also common throughout the island, with particular concentrations at Kavos and near the Monastery of Aghios 36

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Georgios tou Vounou.

Goods traded through Megisti’s Hellenistic port included wine, oil, grain and Lycian timber. The island’s military and commercial facilities continued to be valued, with Roman authorities overseeing repairs to Paliokastro’s walls and installing breakwaters at Kavos and the islet of Psoradia opposite. Amphorae fragments and other pottery on the seabed – probably broken refuse tossed overboard from anchored ships rather than shipwreck evidence – clearly signal Megisti’s ongoing maritime importance.

SAINTS, SARACENS AND BYZANTINE DEFENDERS Little is known of Megisti during Roman and Byzantine rule, prior to the arrival in the region of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in 1306. The population consisted mostly of farmers, maritime merchants and their families. Local products were mainly wine and olive oil, although various domestic and foreign goods would have passed through the port. Ancient inscriptions reveal the islanders worshiped Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Demeter and the Dioscuri. Christianity probably came early to Megisti, spread by seaborne travelers.

Foremost among these may have been St. Paul himself, whose voyage from the

Aegean to Jerusalem in AD 58 took him directly past Megisti.

Early Christian worship in Megisti is indicated archaeologically by the remains of a small chapel near the island’s double port, on the same site as the later Church of Aghios Georgios Malaxos or Psiphios (1637) and the current Church of Aghios Georgios Santrape (1904-1907). Also early is the partly preserved mosaic floor of a chapel, later reused in the Katholikon for the Monastery of Aghios Georgios tou Vounou (18th c.). An inscription carved on an ancient pulpit now in the tiny Church of Aghios Georgios o Phtochoulis (unknown date) near Paliokastro suggests the pulpit once belonged to a (now-destroyed) chapel of Aghios Vasileios, perhaps built on the same site in Early Christian times.

Local legend holds a small chapel was also established in the 4th century AD by the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, on the spot where the Church of Aghios Konstantinos and Aghia Eleni (1835), Kastellorizo’s revered patron saints, now stands.

With the onset of Arab raids in the 7th century, life on Megisti became less tranquil. Byzantine authorities used the island’s late-4th c. BC fortifications to defend the island against these Eastern marauders. In one incident, Rhodian records show that Byzantine ships set sail

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© MINISTRY OF CULTURE & SPORTS, EPHORATE OF ANTIQUITIES OF DODECANESE

© NIKOLAS LEVENTAKIS, ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF KASTELLORIZO

© NIKOLAS LEVENTAKIS, ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF KASTELLORIZO

HISTORY

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HISTORY

from there in 718 to repel an approaching Saracen fleet. In 807, an armada of the Caliph Harun-al-Rashin similarly threatened Rhodes, likely also troubling Megisti on its way.

MERCHANTS OF VENICE Italian, particularly Venetian, traders were a dominant force in the medieval eastern Mediterranean economy, already receiving permission in 1082 from Byzantium’s emperor to conduct their maritime business through Rhodes. Sea trade could be extremely profitable, but also risky, as fortunes might be made or lost depending on the successful completion of a commercial fleet’s voyage. Following the Crusaders’ sack of Constantinople (1204), Rhodes enjoyed a certain independence and control over neighboring islands, probably including Megisti. Eventually

pressed to resubmit to Byzantium, the local Rhodian ruler, Vignolo de Vignoli, instead sold the island to the Knights of St. John. First attempting to take possession of Rhodes in 1306, the Knights remained unsuccessful until 1309; during this interval they may have used Kastellorizo as a forward base of operations. The portside castle partly preserved today was first constructed around 1380, as revealed on the tower by a coat of arms belonging to the Aragon knight, Juan Fernández de Heredia (then Grand Master of the Knights of St. John). It was largely destroyed in 1440, and rebuilt in 1450. Castello Rosso’s fortifications and other infrastructure are described by early travelers, who mention towers, bastions, turrets, a cistern, a courtyard and a drawbridge.

Kastellorizo now found itself at the edge of a highly sophisticated cultural

CHRISTIANITY PROBABLY CAME EARLY TO MEGISTI, SPREAD BY SEABORNE TRAVELERS. FOREMOST AMONG THESE MAY HAVE BEEN ST. PAUL HIMSELF, WHOSE VOYAGE FROM THE AEGEAN TO JERUSALEM IN AD 58 TOOK HIM DIRECTLY PAST MEGISTI.

Remains of the 14th-15th c. Knights’ Castle, built over a 4th c. BC forerunner; Ottomanera bath and modern military bunker in foreground.

sphere during the Middle Ages, especially by the end of the 15th century, as European Renaissance tastes filtered through from the West. Kastellorizo was again influenced by Rhodes, a renewed center of art, architecture, literature and learning. The earliest wall paintings in the Church of Aghios Nikolaos in Kastellorizo, outside the castle, depicting full-length saints and the Prophet David, date to this era. Also flourishing economically, Rhodes engaged in lucrative trade with Anatolian ports. Western goods shipped to Asia Minor included woolen textiles and hides; among Anatolian exports were carpets, silk textiles, wheat and ceramics. Serving as a useful gateway to Asia Minor, Kastellorizo, like Rhodes, probably handled a rich variety of trade items that also included perfumes, saffron, wax, pepper, caviar, oil, wine and sugar. To protect its sea lanes and trade, Rhodes dispatched a squadron of three cannon-bearing galleys.

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itors, particularly Egyptian Mamluks and Ottoman Turks. Kastellorizo lay on the front lines, suffering severe destruction and hardship following Mamluk raids in 1440 and 1444. Maltese archives reveal that Rhodians from Lindos assisted the Knights in defending Kastellorizo, called up by the Grand Master Jean de Lastic, who later described the Kastellorizians’ determined resistance as a “heroic achievement.” Afterward, the island was taken over by King Alfonso V of Aragon, who ordered the port’s damaged castle to be rebuilt (1450) and the island used as a naval base for suppressing Ottoman aggression. Despite ongoing tensions, regional commerce remained largely unhindered. Following a trade agreement between the Knights and Mehmet II the Conqueror (1451), the Aragonese fleet stationed in Kastellorizo was directed not to deter Turkish shipping from moving freely in Rhodian waters.

Territorial disputes and seaborne dangers never long subsided, as Kastellorizo was soon seized by the Catalans (1461) and the kingdom of Naples (1470). By 1480, the island was largely deserted, due to Turkish and Egyptian attacks. It then came again under Naples (1498), and later the Spanish (1512), before finally being seized in 1523, with the rest of the Dodecanese, by the Ottomans’ Suleiman the Magnificent.

ATROCITIES ON ALL SIDES Although medieval Christian chroniclers often emphasize the ruthlessness of invading Turks, it seems Westerners, too, mistreated the inhabitants of the Greek islands. Kastellorizo provided some refuge for Christians during the Fourth Ottoman-Venetian War (1570-73), but the later Cretan War (1645-69) proved disastrous.

Although a combined French-Venetian naval force succeeded in taking over Kas38

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02. Church of Aghios Konstantinos and Aghia Eleni (1835), Kastellorizo’s patron saints, facing Avlogyro Square in the Horafia district.

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tellorizo in 1659, they could not retain their prize. Departing, they demolished the port’s fortifications and left the island in misery. The Cretan poet/historian Marinos Tzanes Bunialis (ca. 1620-1685) wrote of the Venetians’ behavior in abandoning Patmos and Kastellorizo: “They took the Greeks captive, behaving as Turks do, throwing them in chains and stealing all their possessions; any men who survived were enslaved and sent straightaway to the rowing benches. They tore down the walls and seized the people, tying up girls and dragging everyone away; even small Christian children and respected women; dragging them all away like deposed politicians and condemned prisoners.”

RETURN TO PROSPERITY The 18th century proved a period of gradual recovery, far-reaching commerce and eventual decline. With the Ottomans having consolidated their hold on Kastellorizo, a lasting stability allowed the island’s residents to reestablish their customs, regain prosperity and build anew. Wood for merchant ships was readily available on the opposite Anatolian mainland, and the port of Mandraki again became a center of shipbuilding and repair. Kastellorizian captains sailed throughout the Aegean, as well as to Constantinople and the ports of Alexandria, Cyprus, Antalya and Tunis. They traded in timber, charcoal, sponges, carpets and a host of other items. Men worked in all aspects of maritime commerce, while

© MINISTRY OF CULTURE & SPORTS, EPHORATE OF ANTIQUITIES OF DODECANESE

01. A 17th c. wall painting rescued from the Church of Aghios Nikolaos tou Kastrou.

© NIKOLAS LEVENTAKIS, ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF KASTELLORIZO

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© ECOLE BIBLIQUE ET ARCHEOLOGIQUE FRANCAISE DE JERUSALEM

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View of the Kavos promontory, 1916.

(La Revue Biblique)

women, who often saw their husbands only during winter months, remained on the island managing family properties, running households and raising and educating their children. Richard Pococke visited Kastellorizo in 1739, noting that the island’s slopes were covered with vineyards and its shores were a haven for Christian corsairs from Malta. Kastellorizians also established small communities on the Anatolian coast (e.g., Kalamaki, Antiphellos, Tristomi, Kakava, Myra, Livisi and Finikas), where they operated second farmsteads producing wine, wheat and other agricultural goods to supplement their incomes.

Greek culture, language and religion also flourished. New churches and monasteries were founded, including the Monastery of Aghios Georgios tou Vounou and

the Monastery of Profitis Ilias (1763).

Beside Mandraki harbor, an Ottoman mosque was also built, apparently above an earlier Christian chapel dedicated to Aghia Paraskevi. Its presence attests to a small Muslim community, whose members seem to have peacefully coexisted with their Greek neighbors. The mosque was converted into Kastellorizo’s archaeological museum in 1966, later becoming its ethnographic museum in 1995.

Economic decline toward the end of the 18th century resulted in dire conditions on the island. The Knights’ castle suffered further destruction in 1788, when the infamous Greek pirate Lambros Katsonis and his corsair fleet bombarded the island’s Turkish garrison with cannon fire, then landed and besieged

their stronghold. Facing defeat, the Turks surrendered in exchange for safe passage to the mainland. Katsonis hauled away the Ottoman cannons and other loot, but sailed away leaving the Kastellorizians to carry on under Turkish rule.

The Egyptologist Claude Étienne Savary describes the island in 1797 as a “rock,” where the inhabitants “can neither sow nor reap. There are no cabbages, no fruit, no cereals. Just a few olives.

From animals, only a few goats climbing the cliffs to find some food…,” while “the best house is rented twelve francs a year and the girl who gets a goat and an olive tree for a dowry is considered rich.” Nevertheless, prior to the 1821 outbreak of the Greek Revolution, Kastellorizo was also credited with having K A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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KASTELLORIZIAN CAPTAINS SAILED THROUGHOUT THE AEGEAN, AS WELL AS TO CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE PORTS OF ALEXANDRIA, CYPRUS, ANTALYA AND TUNIS.

a diverse fleet of large and small sailing ships, the sixth-largest collection of privately owned vessels in the Aegean area, many of which carried cannons. During the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15), Kastellorizian captains ventured far from home to secure large profits, running Britain’s maritime blockade of France to supply food and materiel to England’s enemies. If the crews of these “outlaw” vessels were caught by the Royal Navy, they were sent to prison in Australia – thus establishing an unintended cultural foothold on that continent which, in later, more troubled times, attracted subsequent generations of Kastellorizians seeking better lives.

STRUGGLE FOR NATIONHOOD Being something of a minor sea power, Kastellorizo was ideally positioned to contribute to the Greeks’ revolutionary war effort against the Ottoman Empire. First 40

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sending their families off to Karpathos, Kasos and Amorgos for greater safety, Kastellorizo’s ship owners and other fighting-age men threw themselves straight into the fray, often using their own craft as fire ships to destroy opposing Turkish vessels and chasing the enemy across the sea.

In one celebrated incident, recalled by historian Athena Tarsouli (1950), two Kastellorizian ships captained by Giannis Diamantaras and Hatzi-Stathis Zimpillas, along with a third local vessel, waylaid two large Ottoman ships in the Gulf of Antalya in June of 1821. One of the enemy vessels belonged to the Pasha Muhammad Ali, Ottoman ruler of Egypt; the other carried Muslim pilgrims returning from the Hadj. During a fierce battle – in which the Greeks’ gunpowder ran out and fighting was reduced to ferocious handto-hand combat using swords, lengths of wood and other makeshift weapons – the

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Pasha’s captain, sensing defeat, tried to blow up his own ship by igniting a powder keg. He succeeded only in destroying the vessel’s superstructure and blowing everyone on deck into the sea, including himself; he was subsequently caught and killed. The Turks suffered many casualties. In the aftermath, the Pasha’s ship was discovered to hold a wealth of wheat, weapons, gunpowder, luxurious Eastern fabrics and chests of gold and silver coins.

All these riches were carried back to Kastellorizo, where great arguments erupted among the populace over the proper division of the spoils.

FROM GREATEST HEIGHTS… The people of Kastellorizo, following the Greek Revolution, woke to a cold reality. Although the national struggle had produced a modern Greek State, the Dodecanese islands remained under Ottoman control. Post-war calm and stability nevertheless energized the Kastellorizians, who again rebuilt, pursued new maritime enterprises and revitalized their society. British archaeologist Charles Fellows expressed awe in 1841 over the island’s newfound sophistication, teeming cafés and waterfronts, bustling shipyards and endless construction projects. “Our impression was that we were visiting

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another country…. We were told only five Turks live on the island. Small ships and large sailboats filled the harbor....

Everyone in Kastellorizo is very active and seems full of commercial spirit.”

The trade in ancient antiquities was also booming, as the islanders dealt in coins and other archaeological “treasures” they had either unearthed themselves or purchased from other clandestine diggers on the shores of Asia Minor. Some passing captains in the 18th and 19th centuries were said to cash in on Kastellorizo’s rich heritage by directing their crews to seek out ancient tombs whose contents could be plundered and sold. In 1835, the Kastellorizians welcomed new privileges granted by the Sultan Mahmud II, including self-government, a limited tax burden, exemption from military recruitment and freedom of movement.

Ship owners were the leading citizens, while their fellow Kastellorizians comprised sailors, fishermen, sponge divers, shipbuilders, carpenters, shopkeepers, small traders and manual laborers. Women managed domestic life and education was taken very seriously. By the early 20th century, the island boasted three public schools for boys and girls, with six teachers; three private schools; and a seminary. People lived well, many in

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luxurious, multi-level neoclassical houses in the packed Kavos district. The Horafia neighborhood beside Mandraki also thrived. The island’s population reached some 12,000 people and another surge in church-building occurred, including chapels of the Panaghia and Aghios Stefanos at Paliokastro; Aghia Triada on the hill of Profitis Ilias; Aghios Dimitrios tou Kastrou, Aghios Georgios Pigadis and Aghios Merkourios near the port; and those of the Panaghia, of Aghios Spyridon and of Aghios Konstantinos and Aghia Eleni in Horafia. Ten ancient granite columns supporting this last church’s interior were brought over for its construction in 1835 from the Temple of Apollo at Patara on the Lycian coast.

Maritime trade constituted the life blood of Kastellorizo’s flowering economy in the 19th century. To promote local shipbuilding, the famous shipwright Nicoletto Karalis was invited to transfer his operations from Chios to Kastellorizo.

Subsequently, the Mandraki shipyards, from 1834 to 1887, produced dozens of small coasting craft and fifty or more merchantmen of 100-300 tons, serving ship owners not only in Kastellorizo but also Hydra, Syros, Mykonos, Milos, Chios, Lesvos, Samos and Santorini. By mid-century, more than 40 Kastellorizian families

owned large cargo ships, while the island’s entire fleet of 165 large and small vessels boasted a total cargo capacity of 24,000 tons. Most Kastellorizian men were sailors. In 1909, a detailed vessel inventory records: 15 large three-masted schooners ( barkobestia ) of 35-45 metric tons each; about 45 brigs (brikia), equipped with two square-rigged masts, of 4-21 tons; about 35 luggers (bratseres) of 1-3.5 tons; and about 60 small sailing craft (varkes), of “lateen, Hydriote and fishing” type.

…TO THE DEPTHS OF WAR By the early 20th century, Kastellorizo had reached its peak as a maritime metropolis. The age of the sail was drawing to an end, however. The advent of steam ships began to impact the island’s commercial network and age-old role as a

01. Revolt against the Turks, March 25, 1913 (Collection of the late Katina Speros).

02. The temporary tent camp set up in the Horafia district following the earthquake in 1926 (Collection of Nicholas Pappas) 03. Mario Lago, the governor of Italy’s Aegean colonies, visited the island in August of 1926. (Renato Tringali) K A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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British commandos landing at Megalos Niftis Point, February 25, 1941, as part of a shortlived invasion that sparked Italian bombing and reprisals.

early 1914, on the eve of WWI, Europe’s Great Powers directed that Kastellorizo again be returned to the Ottomans.

convenient port-of-call. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 brought additional hardship, as Kastellorizians lost many former privileges. Conscription returned; tax exemptions were abolished; religious freedoms were revoked; and trade with the Anatolian mainland was restricted.

Consequently, after 1910, many residents departed – bound for Australia, Egypt, Rhodes, Athens and elsewhere – during the first of several waves of emigration.

Kastellorizo also soon became embroiled in the numerous international conflicts. The Italo-Turkish War broke out in 1911, when Italian forces seized the Dodecanese islands and Ottoman territory in Libya. Kastellorizo, however, was again left to the Turks. Italy ultimately agreed to hand back the Dodecanese, per the Treaty of Ouchy (1912), but the almost simultaneous eruption of the First Balkan War gave it an excuse to renege.

The Turks’ responding naval blockade of the southeast Aegean dealt a severe blow to Kastellorizo, as all commercial activity ceased and more of the island’s economically stricken residents resorted to emigration.

The remaining Kastellorizians called for unification with Greece, then openly revolted against the Turks in 1913. They were supported by the Greek diplomat and philosopher Ion Dragoumis, who orchestrated an invasion of thirty Cretan guerrilla fighters and twenty officers from the Samos Gendarmerie. Together, they took over the island and expelled the Turkish garrison. The Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, however, disagreed with their actions and had to take political and military steps to protect Kastellorizo from a resulting Turkish backlash, which included bloody raids and looting launched from the nearby mainland. In

THROUGHOUT THEIR HISTORY, KASTELLORIZIANS FOUND THEY COULD NOT EASILY BE FREED FROM THE WEB OF INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS AND OUTSIDE AGGRESSION THAT ENSNARED THEM. 42

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NEW MASTERS The inexorable destruction of the Kastellorizians’ once highly developed island and dynamic seafaring society during WWI, the Italian occupation (1921-43) and WWII was, for the islanders, part of a tragic, too-often-repeated pattern.

Throughout their history, Kastellorizians found they could not easily be freed from the web of international interests and outside aggression that ensnared them.

In December of 1915, France landed 500 soldiers on the island, aiming to establish a strategic sea base, monitor Germany’s naval movements and ultimately gain a post-war “France du Levant” that would include Kastellorizo, the “pearl of the East.” In response, a Turkish artillery unit commanded by Mustafa Ertuğrul secretly installed on the opposite shore a battery of sixteen guns capable of shelling Kastellorizo. On January 11, 1917, the Turkish guns opened fire on the island after a large British seaplane carrier, the HMS Ben-my-Chree, was spotted entering the port. The French fought back, bravely assisted by Kastellorizo’s citizens, but the surprise Turkish bombardment successfully sank the British ship and destroyed about 1,000 homes. The Benmy-Chree remained half-submerged in Kastellorizo’s port until 1920, when it was refloated and towed to Piraeus. Life on the island under French rule was marked by internal tensions between families, continued Turkish attacks, economic suffering and a further exodus of its natives.

Following the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), Italy acquired Kastellorizo from France in early 1921 and created a base for military sea planes. Life for the locals was difficult, as their newly fascist overlords imposed high taxes, restricted basic freedoms and interfered with public education and religious practices. The Kastellorizians felt in-

© IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

British anti-aircraft unit in Pera Meria, the western quay of Kastellorizo’s main port, taking aim at passing German aircraft, November of 1943.

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© IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

© IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

After escaping their sinking ship, exhausted Kastellorizian refugees are hauled up to safety by the crew of the Trouncer.

The stricken SS Empire Patrol, with its passengers awaiting rescue on the stern deck, is approached by HMS Trouncer, September 29, 1945.

creasingly isolated, as cross-channel trade relations and access to their mainland properties were also largely severed. Further calamity struck on March 18, 1926, when a severe earthquake damaged or destroyed 361 houses and devastated the port area, killing two adults and two children. Although Italian authorities mobilized aid from Rhodes and Rome, and the Kastellorizians pulled together in a massive communal effort, recovery was slow. Eventually, new public squares and elegant edifices were constructed, some designed by Italy’s great colonial architect Florestano Di Fausto.

THE “MOUZAHRES” Kastellorizian resistance to Italian authority, fueled by discontent over stagnating economic conditions and the recent ceding of many of Kastellorizo’s islets to the Turks, came to a violent head in the early 1930s. Tensions among the island’s citizens and leading clans also arose over the shady governance of Ioannis Lakerdis, mayor since 1920, and his followers.

Public frustration was already boiling when a new tax hike was announced on January 12, 1934 – doubling import tariffs on petrol, coffee, sugar and flour. A series of protests, the “Mouzahres,” flared up 44

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over the next two months, initially involving all citizens but later predominantly women and girls. On January 22, Lakerdis was nearly lynched by demonstrators.

Three days later, historian Nicholas Pappas writes, “a noisy group of middle-aged and elderly women, many in traditional Kastellorizian dress, gathered outside the council chambers and called for the resignation of Lakerdis.” The next day, twenty carabinieri arrived from Rhodes, and “the women and some youths clamored to the vessel as it docked.”

Disembarking, the carabinieri panicked; shoving ensued; warning shots were fired; protestors were struck with rifle butts; some were pushed or fell into the harbor; and twenty women were later reported injured. A similar disturbance occurred on the first of March, with female demonstrators suffering further injuries and impromptu “baptisms,” while Lakerdis shouted at the crowd, “I will set fire to you all. I will not leave this island without reducing it to ashes!”

Finally, on March 25, 1934, after a particularly violent clash, Lakerdis was removed from office, the tariffs were lifted and early elections were announced.

The Mouzahres of Kastellorizo was widely proclaimed a victory for Hellenism, ac-

cording to Pappas. “Articles appeared in nearly all Greek newspapers heralding Lakerdis’ fall as a moment of triumph for the Greeks of the Dodecanese ‘after centuries of enslavement.’” With economic hardship unrelenting, however, Kastellorizo’s population continued to decline and, by 1940, emigration had left the island with only about 1,500 residents.

WARTIME RAVAGES World War II brought enormous adversity and loss to Kastellorizo. Already difficult living conditions were compounded by both Axis and Allied military exploitation and maltreatment. A failed British invasion of the island in 1941 was a particularly bitter pill, as the inhabitants were subsequently left to the fury of Mussolini’s brutal fascists. Wishing to quell Italian raids on Aegean sea traffic and to prevent possible future German occupation of the Dodecanese islands, the British decided to establish a base for fast torpedo boats at Kastellorizo. Landing before dawn on February 25, 1941, southeast of the port, more than 200 British commandos quickly overwhelmed the Italian garrison in the castle and the Paliokastro fortress. The Kastellorizians believed liberation was at hand. Celebra-

Kastellorizian men, women and children gather to celebrate liberation from Italy and unification (“Enosis”) with Greece, October 28, 1949.

tions broke out, Greek flags were hoisted and people flooded the streets singing and denouncing fascism. Sadly, despite naval support, the British had no air support. Italian radio operators sent a plea for help to Rhodes and Italian bombers quickly responded, wreaking havoc on the Royal Navy, Kastellorizo’s port area and the surrounding hills.

Over the next two days, Italian troops successfully landed, counter-attacked and forced the British to evacuate on February 28th. Afterward, already having suffered death, injury and the destruction of their homes, the Kastellorizians were subjected to beatings, executions and imprisonment

by Italian authorities for embracing the enemy. To avenge these injustices, a Kastellorizian guerrilla, Nikos Savvas, joined an Allied commando raid that blew up Italian warplanes and damaged two airfields in Rhodes on September 13, 1942.

Further misfortune came to Kastellorizo in 1943 when Italy capitulated on September 8th. The British reoccupied the

island; it again became a naval base; and the Germans responded with a merciless aerial bombardment lasting from October 17th to November 19th. All remaining Kastellorizians now fled their island.

Some eventually reached Australia, but many others became refugees – traveling through Cyprus or Syria before being settled in large camps in Palestine and Egypt. Firsthand accounts of Kastellorizo’s final exodus in 1943 are eerily reminiscent of similar hardships endured by immigrants entering Greece today, many of them also refugees displaced by war.

Yet more devastation occurred in Kastellorizo in July of 1944, when a British fuel depot exploded. A massive fire engulfed the town, destroying another 1,400 houses. In a final insult, the residents’ abandoned homes were looted of all their valuable possessions. Despite hearing of these calamities, the people of Kastellorizo yearned for their island home.

AN ISLAND REBORN The Kastellorizians’ return in 1945 was also marked by tragedy, but proved a further testament to their courage and determination to retain their beleaguered culture and restore their homeland to better times. Under UN auspices, about

1,500 Kastellorizians – mostly women, children and elderly citizens – departed from the Levant in three ships. The first two arrived safely, but the third, SS Empire Patrol, caught fire after leaving Port Said. Thirty-three adults and young children perished. The accident and its victims are still commemorated annually in Kastellorizo, where an inscribed monument also preserves their memory. In a 2016 BBC interview, Maria Chroni, a lifelong Kastellorizian, described being rescued when she was only eight years old: “I found myself at sea, holding on to a wooden plank…. How it happened, I can’t remember. I only know I that I stayed in this position for ten hours. Then my father rescued me and lifted me into the charred boat.”

After WWII, Kastellorizo remained under Allied control until at last it officially joined Greece on March 7, 1948. Since then, the island’s fortunes have been steadily improving. Recent international tensions swirling around Kastellorizo highlight its enduring economic and geo-political significance. The efforts of Kastellorizians both on the island and around the world are bringing ever greater respect for its unique turbulent history and the resilience of its people.

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WHERE IS KASTELLORIZO?

K

astellorizo’s airport is located high up the mountain.

From the runway you cannot see the sea. When the small plane lands, the island’s mountaintops entwine with those of the mainland opposite. The geographical proximity of the coasts is close. Turks today call Kastellorizo an “island on the wrong side,” implying that the geographical proximity 46

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with the mainland opposite defines the island to such an extent as to deny it its rights. It cannot claim maritime zones. It is simply a “wrong” island.

In reality, Kastellorizo was for centuries a feeder island of the continental coast.

The two areas were inextricably linked.

The Kastellorizians cultivated land on the facing mainland and sold their products on the global markets. They would seek

shelter on the mainland from pirate raids on their island. Along this very coastline in antiquity were built a series of villages and towns (Livisi, Kalamaki, Kakava, Antifellos). The inhabitants of Kastellorizo belonged to the same families as those living on the shore opposite.

Then came the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922. The defeat of the Greek army was followed by a compulsory exchange

Š AMNA/CHRISTOS SIMATOS

The Megisti island complex is the easternmost Greek territory, and the most remote of the Dodecanese group.

That it lies in the Mediterranean Sea or close to the Turkish mainland does not change either of these facts.

BY ANGELOS SYRIGOS

of populations between the two countries, in which Christians went to Greece and Muslims to Turkey. All of the Greek islands along the Asia Minor coast were left in limbo, cut off in terms of population, culture and economy from the coast where Greek populations had lived for millennia. Kastellorizo was perhaps the most extreme case. For the first time in history, it lost its ties to the mainland.

This, combined with the oppressive policies of the Italians under whose rule the island came, had fatal consequences for the population. Out of 12,000 inhabitants in 1905, a scant 1,500 remained in 1940.

During WWII, the island was deserted.

It was bombed successively by the Italians in 1941 and by the Germans in 1943.

The population was evacuated to safety.

A fire destroyed the island’s houses in

1944, hiding the extent of the looting by the British troops who had been billeted there. Only ruins remained. After 1945, the inhabitants started to return, although strong diaspora communities of Kastellorizians, most notably that of Australia, exerted a strong attraction.

The island complex of Megisti (Kastellorizo) belongs to the Dodecanese and is the easternmost extent of Greek territory.

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KASTELLORIZO AND THE SURROUNDING GREEK ISLETS BELONG ADMINISTRATIVELY TO THE DODECANESE. THIS IS NOT MERELY BECAUSE THEY WERE TRANSFERRED TO GREECE IN 1947 BY THE PARIS CONVENTION. TURKEY ITSELF HAS IN THE PAST RECOGNISED THE UNITY OF THE SPACE.

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It consists of nineteen islands and rocky outcrops. It is located approximately 75 miles from Rhodes, and 0.5 to 3 miles from the Turkish coast. The three largest islands in the complex are Megisti (better known as Kastellorizo), Ro to the west of Megisti, and Strongyli (or Ypsili) which is the easternmost piece of Greek land.

The Megisti island complex first occupied international affairs in 1929, when Italy and Turkey went to the Permanent Court of International Justice to obtain a ruling on the ownership of a series of islets and rocks. The court never deliberated on the case, but Italy and Turkey signed an agreement in January of 1932, and asked for the judicial proceedings to be halted. The process used for deciding which of the smaller islands around Kastellorizo belong with the island holds some interest. The island’s metropolis became the center of a circle. From there, a straight line was drawn to Cape Aghios Stephanos. All the islands that fell within the radius were considered Italian. The rest passed to Turkish rule.

In 1947, the Megisti complex was transferred along with the Dodecanese to Greek rule. Greece assumed the rights and responsibilities previously held by Italy. Among them were the maritime boundaries with Turkey. Since then, Kastellorizo has stayed out of the limelight, with the exception of the deliberations of the Acheson Plan of 1965, which envisaged conceding Kastellorizo to Turkey in exchange for the unification of Cyprus with Greece.

The sea around Kastellorizo was the scene of two serious air accidents. On August 3, 1953, a French passenger airline was forced to make an emergency landing at sea off Megisti. Out of 42 passengers, 4 did not survive. There were no surviors from the Cyprus Airlines flight on October 12, 1967, when an explosive device went off in flight in the Kastellorizo airspace.

Kastellorizo took on a special role in Greek-Turkish relations after 2010. The reason was the discovery of hydrocarbon resources south of Cyprus, which

signaled the possibility of more discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean region.

Indications are that rich resources abound in the areas south and east of Crete, Rhodes and Kastellorizo.

Turkey is trying to draw a distinction between the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, and wishes to separate the Megisti island complex from the rest of the Greek islands. In this context, Turkey has been asking since 2009 as to which maritime region Kastellorizo – or more correctly, the Megisti complex – belongs. In an interview of Turkey’s then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu by Alexis Papahelas that appeared in Kathimerini on March 6, 2011, the following exchange took place: Papahelas: “Is Turkey truly against the inclusion of Kastellorizo in a potential solution package, and if so, why?”

Davutoglu: “Exploratory talks have the explicit aim of examining all subjects pertaining to our disagreements in the Aegean. Therefore, we are focusing first and foremost on the subject of the Aegean. However, Kastellorizo is located in the Mediterranean. As regards the island of Kastellorizo, Turkey has sound legal and political positions, in agreement with international law and the case law of the international courts, including The Hague.”

In 1923, the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) defined the limits of the Aegean as Crete, Karpathos, Rhodes, and the Asia Minor coast. According to the IHO definition, Kastellorizo is outside the Aegean, in the part of the Mediterranean known as the Lycian Sea or the Levantine Sea. However, the IHO’s delineations exist only to facilitate shipping and to coordinate map-making and hydrographic research. They do not carry any legal or political weight. This is made clear in the IHO’s own report: “The Limits proposed, as described in the text and shown in the three accompanying diagrams, have been drawn up solely for the convenience of National Hydrographic Offices when compiling their Sailing Directions, Notices to Mar-

GEOPOLITICS

iners, etc. so as to ensure that all such publications headed with the name of an Ocean or Sea will deal with the same area, and they are not to be regarded as representing the result of full geographic study; the bathymetric results of various oceanographic expeditions have however been taken into consideration so far as possible, and it is therefore hoped that these delimitations will also prove acceptable to Oceanographers. These limits have no political significance whatsoever.”* Furthermore, it has been accepted in case law that the definition of these types of limits is artificial and does not form the basis for a delimitation or the specific attribution of rights: “The report by the International Hydrographic Organization constitutes a convincing reason for distinguishing between maritime sectors based upon its definitions of the ‘Caribbean’ and the ‘Atlantic.’ This report was not intended to be used as a basis for delimitation or for any specific attribution of rights; it was simply an effort to identify broad geographical denominations…” ** Kastellorizo and the surrounding Greek islets belong administratively to the Dodecanese. This is not merely because they were transferred to Greece in 1947 by the Paris Convention. Turkey itself has in the past recognised the unity of the space, and the unified treatment of the Megisti complex along with the rest of the Dodecanese. In 1932, Turkey signed an agreement and a protocol with Italy. At that point, a borderline was drawn connecting Kastellorizo with Rhodes, despite the fact that on the one side is the Turkish coast and on the other the open sea.

The goal of Turkey is to demonstrate that Kastellorizo and the surrounding islets are “islands on the wrong side” of the middle line. Such islands tend to have limited influence on the drawing of the median line. More specifically, one of the factors taken into account in the relevant case law is proportionality (the ratio between the length of their coast-

line and the maritime areas attributed to each state based on the temporary use of the median line). If the Kastellorizo complex were separated from the rest of the Aegean islands, it would appear as a small group of islands dominated by a disproportionately large Turkish coastline, while being almost attached to it. The small length of the Greek island complex would be disproportionate to the maritime zones that would be attributed to it using the median line principle, compared to the Turkish coastline and their own maritime zones. Therefore, Turkey will ask that Kastellorizo is only attributed a littoral zone.

Regarding the Turkish arguments, it should be pointed out that there are no facing coastlines between Greece and Turkey based on which it could be said that Kastellorizo is on the “wrong side”.

The Megisti complex itself constitutes the facing coastline to Turkey in that specific geographical area. In addition, in the broader maritime region of the eastern Mediterranean, we do not only have the projection of the Kastellorizo coast. In the same region are Rhodes, Karpathos, and Crete. The projection of their coasts (along with those of the Megisti complex) defines the maritime zones in the region.

Finally, the island of Strongyli deserves special mention. The island in question has a significant influence on the delimitation with Cyprus, Egypt and Turkey.

Greece and Cyprus share continental shelf and EEZ limits specifically because of the existence of this island. If Strongyli did not exist, there would exist between the continental shelves of Greece and Cyprus a small triangular section of Turkish continental shelf. Its strategic importance is obvious.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANGELOS SYRIGOS is Associate Professor of International Law and Foreign Policy at the Department of International and European Studies at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens. He has published books on Greek-Turkish relations, the Cyprus issue, and the Prespa Agreement.

* Preface to the 3rd -and last approved edition of the report: “Limits of Oceans and Seas,” Special Publication No 23, International Hydrographic Organization, 3rd edition, 1953 ** Barbados v. Trinidad and Tobago, The Permanent Court of Arbitration, Award 11th of April 2006, par. 314.

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© NICHOLAS PAPPAS PERSONAL ARCHIVE

DRESSING UP

HAUTE

COUTURE Gathered from the trade routes around the Mediterranean, the clothing of the women of Kastellorizo was a distinct and opulent expression of the island’s culture.

BY N ICHOL A S BOGI AT ZI S

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© NIKOS PILOS

© AMNA/CHRISTOS SIMATOS

The traditional culture of the island is rightly respected and embraced by the youth of the island. Eleni Karavelatzi proudly wears an elaborate ensemble which took her grandmother two years to make.

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© NICHOLAS PAPPAS PERSONAL ARCHIVE

© COURTESY OF NICHOLAS C. BOGIATZIS

DRESSING UP

One can but imagine the dramatic effect of a group of women wearing such vibrant colors and textures.

W

omen’s dress on Kastellorizo might be a poetic metaphor for the story of the island itself. The centuries layered drama upon drama to construct the island’s complex history.

Similarly, the island’s women layered exotic fabric upon fabric to create an image of rich abundance. Dress was not to enhance a woman’s charms, but to reflect her social position.

Silks and brocades from the trade routes of the Mediterranean found their way to Kastellorizo to adorn its people.

Names from exotic locations tumble together to describe the rich components: tarabalousi from Libya, mezaroulenia from Egypt, hambousaki from Beirut.

Printed cottons came from Russia, cashmeres from India, and silks from France.

The core component of the women’s ensemble was the kavadi. This richly brocaded, often gold-threaded open kaftan sat over a white poukamiso, or chemise, and from beneath peeked the brocaded vraka, or pantaloon. A length of wide silk, 52

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Bold colors and patterns were brought together to create luxurious impressions of opulence in the women’s kavadi.

the zosma, swathed the hips.

Most impressive was the silk velvet gouna, the fur-lined, gold-embroidered coat. The younger girl’s version, the kontohi, came only to the hips but was similarly embellished. Atop this went the long fringed mandili, the large kerchief pinned to the tsaki, or cap, on the woman’s head.

The fustanella, or Greek kilt, of the mainland was alien to the islands, including Kastellorizo. Here, the men wore the vraka. Embroidered vests were worn over collarless shirts, while a silk zounari, or sash, gave a dashing touch to the waist.

The overall impression was of wealth and abundance. For an island of traders, the outward display of prosperity was a public display of success. Characteristic of trading islands, jewelry was mostly of gold, unlike the silver common in agriculturally based economies. Not coincidently, sleeves came only to the elbow to allow the display of arm jewellery.

Yet despite this abundance of jewelry, nothing characterized Kastellorizian dress more than the boukla, or brooch. It is still

the single item that most resonates with the community of today.

A charming element of a bride’s wardrobe was the kotsini, or red parasol. As Kastellorizian culture was rooted in Eastern traditions as well, a bride would have been confined to home before marriage.

So as she walked to her wedding, the sun shining through the red parasol would endow a healthy red glow to her cheeks.

All the components of a young woman’s dress, plus her jewelry and household effects for marriage, would be agreed in the essential pre-nuptial agreement, or prikosymphono. This also confirmed women’s property rights well before their Western sisters.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NICHOLAS BOGIATZIS’ family is part of the Kastellorizian diaspora in Australia, having left the island over 100 years ago. Bogiatzis has studied the island’s social history and has recently published “Kastellorizian Jewellery: A Dispersed Archive of a Past Culture.” (kazzijewellery@gmail.com)

DRESSING UP

© COURTESY OF NICHOLAS C. BOGIATZIS

Children were adored and adorned. This haimali, or pendant charm, with its complex cannetille work and numerous coins would have been given to a child at birth to proffer protection and good fortune.

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MANDILI

These heavily embroidered large silk scarves dramatically completed the ensemble. They came from both East and West, sourced from China, Marseilles and Constantinople. Widows would wear tsilaniotika, scarves made from a dark dyed fabric brought from Ceylon.

Less was not more! Jewelry was a critical indicator of status. Chains of gold coins displayed family wealth or a girl’s dowry.

Each ear was triple pierced for earrings. As was fitting for a merchant culture, jewelry was largely coin-based, allowing items to be readily cashed out or added to in order to meet changing needs.

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Š NIKOS PILOS

JEWELRY

TSAKI

The heavy mandili was held to the cap by a gold karfovelona, or coin pin.

A bride might wear the popazi, or crimson felt hat, rather than the usual tsaki, or cap. An older woman might add a small kapalossi, or knitted cap (left).

BOUKLA

Both dramatically ornamental and essentially functional, six of these round brooches pinned closed the poukamiso, or blouse. Their foliate decoration was wrought using granulation and blind filigree. From the bottom boukla hung the five-fold crusader cross.

ZOSMA

© NICHOLAS PAPPAS PERSONAL ARCHIVE

GOUNA

No word other than “sumptuous” can describe this coat. It was of deep magenta or royal purple silk velvet, with a fur-lined front and sleeves.

Heavy embroidery using kalapatani, gold thread from Alexandria, added lustre and sensuously emphasized the waist and rounded hips.

KAVADI

A piece of silk up to six meters in length and a meter wide would be wrapped around a woman’s hips. Formal ones were gold-threaded with silver edging and held with fasanous, or silver woven tassels.

This open kaftan is characteristic of Kastellorizian dress. It was made from the richest of materials and designed to impress. The bottom was tailored to flare open as a woman walked, to show the psalidia, or triple silk lining, in the kavadi’s lower corners.

KOUNTOURES

Today, it’s hard to imagine how women managed to move aound in these everyday-wear open slippers, gold embroidered on velvet with sturdy leather soles. A new pair might be given by a bride to her fiancé to impress him with her handicraft skills.

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ARCHITECTURE

THE HOUSES ON THE ROCK A unique style of domestic construction that combined oriental and neoclassical 56

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elements lives on in today’s rebuilding projects.

B Y F O T I N I C H A LVA N T Z I // WA T E R C O L O R S B Y P AV L O S H A B I D I S C O U R T E S Y OF T H E H E L L E N IC H I ST ORY F OU N DAT ION ( I DI SM E )

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O

ne beautiful December morning 15 winters ago, I visited the island of Kastellorizo for the first time, knowing little of its special history. Looking at the picturesque fishing village that made up the island’s only settlement, it seemed to me that time had simply stopped here several decades earlier, leaving a vista of abandonment and ruin. However, I only realized the true magnitude of the disasters that have befallen this island when, in a local convenience store, I spied a panoramic photograph of the port, taken in the early 20th century.

The image showed the same harbor and the same hill as I had seen moments earlier, but instead of what I’d seen outside, in the picture there stood hundreds of houses, one right next to the other, without a single gap in between. At first, I wondered whether this was a real photograph or the work of someone’s imagination, as I couldn’t believe that the settlement that I was now standing in had once been such a densely populated harbor town. After all, the promontory of Kavos that I’d glanced at a few minutes earlier was covered in ruins and wild fig trees.

The contrasting images swirled in my mind for days and months after I returned home. Archival material, including photographs and planning designs, were said either to be lost or scattered to the ends of the earth where the island’s expatriates had migrated, taking with them all their stories and all the secrets of the place. Nonetheless, unanswered questions about a community and a once-flourishing culture that had left a unique architectural imprint nurtured in me a desire to return and explore the settlement in depth. And so, a few years later, I began the wonderful work of systematically recording the architectural legacy of what was left of the town as part of my doctoral disser58

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AFTER THE GREEK REVOLUTION, KASTELLORIZO EXPERIENCED A SURGE IN POPULATION AND A FRENZY OF RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT. OVER A PERIOD OF 40 YEARS, THE POPULATION MORE THAN TRIPLED.

tation, “The Residential Development of Kastellorizo in the Post-Revolutionary Years until the Integration with the Greek State,” for the School of Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens.

On a little rock at the edge of the Aegean Sea, a relatively small Greek population earned its living from the sea for centuries. The island’s advantageous position, combined with favorable conditions for the development of maritime trade, made Kastellorizo an important seaport from well before the 18th century. After the Greek Revolution, Kastellorizo experienced a surge in population and a frenzy of residential development. Over a period of 40 years, the population more than tripled, as migrants from other islands rushed to share in this minor economic miracle.

With available land around the port no longer sufficing, a part of the settlement was even built on land reclaimed from the sea.

Space for construction was in high demand, and the existing dwellings, with the characteristic cubist form that prevails in the Aegean area, were gradually replaced by two and three-storey houses with pitched roofs.

Ships brought not only products but ideas, and Kastellorizians came to enjoy a cultural enrichment that was reflected in the architectural landscape.

Cosmopolitanism, through contact with the coast of Asia Minor and with other peoples of the Mediterranean, created a unique cultural blend of East and West, influencing a style of domestic construction that combined oriental and neoclassical elements. (A century later, expatriate Kastellorizians motivated by the desire to give back to their ancestral community, were to play an active role in the construction of public buildings that also embraced this style of architecture.)

The story of the town of Kastellorizo is to be found in its historical layers.

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Since antiquity, human settlement on the island was centered on the promontory of Kavos, a location with strategic advantages. A fortified tower standing between two natural harbors controlled trade routes to the eastern Mediterranean. In medieval times, this fortified core evolved and expanded, forming the first residential precinct. During the years of Ottoman domination, the town gradually spread amphitheatrically, following the contours of the natural landscape.

The urban fabric was extremely dense, with serpentine lanes. Churches and schools were erected in the little public space that was left. The rigid social and ethnic stratification was reflected in the existence of exclusive neighborhoods. The privileged area of Kavos was dominated by wealthy shipowners. The areas of Mesi tou Yialou (“Mid-Coast”) and Kavoulaki (“Little Cove”) were home to merchants. In Pigadia (“Wells”), one found seamen and the working classes, while the small Muslim community, mainly civil servants and their families, remained safely huddled around the Kastro (“Castle”).

As the population began to decrease in the last two decades of the 19th century, construction fell into decline, while significant destruction of the town began with the shelling that took place in WWI and with the catastrophic earthquake of 1926. During the Italian occupation (1921-1943), targeted urban interventions were implemented which sought to consolidate the authority of the regime through the construction of public buildings with colonial and eclectic characteristics. The architectural landscape changed dramatically with the savage destruction of much of the settlement during the bombardments of 1943 and the devastating fire of 1944.

Since its integration into the Greek state in 1948, the settlement has struggled to heal its wounds. Only a relatively 60

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOTINI CHALVANTZI (halfotini@hotmail. com) is an architect-restorer, a graduate from the National Technical University.

She is the co-principal of the architectural studio IFO (www.ifostudio.com) based in Athens, which specializes in heritage and conservation projects for historical monuments and archaeological sites. Currently, she is completing her doctoral thesis on the architectural legacy of Kastellorizo in the 19th century, where she has already completed a number of heritage studies of traditional houses and public buildings.

THE ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE CHANGED DRAMATICALLY WITH THE SAVAGE DESTRUCTION OF MUCH OF THE SETTLEMENT DURING THE BOMBARDMENTS OF 1943 AND THE FIRE OF 1944.

small part of the original town has been preserved intact, while large sections still remain in ruins and overgrown. Since the 1990s, the restoration of dilapidated family homes by Greek-Australian expatriates has helped to restore the built environment, while other Europeans – mostly Italians and French – have been attracted by the charms of what remains of the town and by an image that combines myth and nostalgia for the golden age of the island.

Happily, during the last decade, there has been an increasing trend towards faithful restoration, not only of ruined houses, but also of public monuments, assisted by the generosity of expatriates and distinguished friends of Kastellorizo.

In general, the restorations have been governed by respect for the traditional character of the settlement, but there are also unfortunate examples that have forever altered the authenticity of the built environment. Clearly, it is essential that we all contribute to preserving those special characteristic features of the town which are an integral part of the island’s architectural heritage. Let us hope that all of us who participate in this gradual process of restoration appreciate that we are only temporary guardians of Kastellorizo’s architectural legacy, a legacy which must be preserved and passed on, intact, to future generations.

ARCHITECTURE

OPEN HOUSE Read more about traditional Kastellorizian homes of the past by scanning the QR Code above.

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© COLLECTION OF NICHOLAS PAPPAS

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1931 LANDING ON WATER A harbor that was once crammed with two and three-masted ships is instead a busy stopover port for Air France and Imperial Airways seaplanes on their flights to and from the Near and Far East. Successive periods of occupation are revealed by the juxtaposition of the Italian headquarters building at the extreme left with the island’s 18th-century mosque, which catered for the small Muslim population until 1913. The mosque, which underwent restoration work, now houses one of the island’s museums.

Painstakingly gathered from private collections and family albums, these rare photographs offer glimpses of the island and its people in the early 20th century.

& WHITE

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© COLLECTION OF ANGELO KOUTTS

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1935 THE BRIDE This photograph of young bride Evangelia Palaiou (née Koutsoukou) is revealing of the ornate and composite nature of Kastellorizo’s bridal costume. Over a long cotton shirt held together by five elaborate chased silver or gold pinned boúkles (brooches), a silk kavadi (kaftan) was layered over a baggy trouser, bound low across the hips with a long silk belt, or zosma. Over these was worn a richly embroidered and fur-lined velvet coat of either short or extended length. The outfit was completed by a large silk mandili (headscarf) to cover a popazi (headpiece), a fringed shawl, and gold embroidered kountoures (slippers).

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Š COURTESY NEDLAND FAMILY

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1931 SPONGE DIVING Kastellorizo’s economic zenith in the mid-19th century was, in large part, attributable to Ottoman liberality, which permitted minimal tax obligations and financial self-regulation. One activity which was of particular attraction during this period was sponge diving, mainly off the Syrian coast, an industry that experienced a limited revival on the island in the early 1930s, when this photograph was taken.

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1940 SCHOOL CONCERT With war raging across Europe, Kastellorizo’s Italian occupiers mandated patriotic displays from the island’s declining population.

The Santrape School building is seen here draped in Italy’s national colors, while banners dedicate the performance to Italy’s King and Queen.

The children, too, are wearing Italian costumes and performing a provincial Italian dance.

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© COURTESY THE LATE VENEDICTOS LIVISSIANIS

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1938 COFFEE BREAK Despite Kastellorizo’s economic and social decline in the early decades of the 20th century, there was always time for rest and relaxation in the town’s cafes. Here, three young men enjoy a quiet conversation at the shaded café behind the newly built mercato, or market.

It is worth noting that the three men pictured here would all emigrate to Australia within a few short months.

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Š COLLECTION OF NICHOLAS PAPPAS

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1926 FEAST DAY REVELRY As in all Greek communities, feast days were, and still are, celebrated communally with considerable gusto. Despite Kastellorizo’s strict social customs which otherwise excluded pubescent females from social interaction until marriage, males and younger and older females engaged freely in the celebration of the major feast days of the Orthodox calendar, as this photo depicts.

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© COURTESY KATHRYN COUTTOUPES

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1904 WEDDING If there is one image that captures the elegance and splendor of the marriage ritual on Kastellorizo, it is this photograph from the wedding of Emmanuel Kouttoupés and Evdokia Spyridi in 1904.

The traditional female costume is juxtaposed with ornate Edwardian outfits among the females, both young and old, while the Ottoman fez, tieless buttoned shirts and vrákes (breeches) contrast with Western suits and neckties among the males.

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LEGEND

THE LADY WITH THE FLAG The story of Despina Achladiotou (1890-1982), the legendary Lady of Ro who for decades raised the Greek flag on the remote islet west of Kastellorizo, is one of the most touching patriotic tales of modern Greece.

BY M Y RTO K AT SIGE R A

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ost people live their lives without a purpose. Despina Achladiotou’s life has a purpose: to let passing ships know the islet of Ro is Greek. As soon as she spots a ship, she runs to the mast that has been set up on the beach, and raises and lowers the Greek flag several times. And the ship, according to the international courtesy rules of the sea, raises and lowers its own flag.”

These were the opening sentences of the April 1956 article in “Eikones” magazine, which made the “Lady with the Flag” famous across the nation. By then, Despina Achladiotou had already lived on Ro for 30 years – more than half of those alone. Over time, what this diminutive woman considered the most normal things in the world – not abandoning her island, raising the Greek flag – took on mythical dimensions, while she herself became a symbol of heroism and patriotism. Lucky are those who had the opportunity to meet her and experience her generous hospitality – she was so pleased to receive guests!

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© PHOTO FROM EIKONES MAGAZINE, VASOS MIGKOS

This photograph of Achladiotou taken for “Eikones” magazine became etched in the Greek public consciousness.

The original caption read: “Kyra Despina, every time a ship passes by her islet, raises the Greek flag up the pole.”

Despina Achladiotou was born in 1890. She settled on Ro with her husband, Kostas, in 1927, during Italian rule. At the time, the island was an uninhabited borderline between Turkey and the Dodecanese, and the municipality leased it to animal herders from Kastellorizo. One day, about a year into their stay, a small team of Turkish soldiers disembarked from a motorboat and raised a Turkish flag on Ro. Despina reported the incident to the authorities on Kastellorizo.

The Italian government took on the case, and asserted that the island was inhabited and therefore belonged to Italy, as did the other islands in the group. The Turkish flag fell unceremoniously.

Despina and Kostas were the only inhabitants of the islet until 1940, when he fell ill. Nobody on Kastellorizo noticed the three fires that she’d lit as a distress signal, and so help came too late. Kostas died on the boat taking him to Kastellorizo. After making arrangements for his burial, Despina returned to Ro with her mother. In the meantime, Greece and Italy had gone to war. Despina returned to Kastellorizo and began to help the Greek troops involved in the war effort in the Middle East, offering them food and lodging. In 1943, after the surrender of Italy, the British ordered the evacuation of Kastellorizo and the surrounding areas, but Achladiotou refused to abandon her island, even after heavy German bombardment in November 1943. In her interview, she said, “They were firing and you could see the rocks falling. I said to myself, ‘This is the end of us.’”

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© MUNICIPALITY OF MEGISTI ISLAND ARCHIVE

Despina Achladiotou is honored by the Defense Ministry for her services to the country at a ceremony held on Kastellorizo in 1975.

inhabited by a woman and her elderly mother, who welcomed them into their home and offered them food. On returning to their base, they informed their superiors, who sent a boatful of supplies.

As that boat left, its crew saw the Greek flag flying over Ro. When the islands were handed over to Greece, Achladiotou approached 72

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the military commander of Kastellorizo to ask: “Why not raise the Greek flag on Ro – so that everyone knows to whom it belongs?” The commander liked the idea. He ordered a flagpole to be installed, and gave Achladiotou a brand new Greek flag.

From that moment on, raising the flag at dawn and lowering it at dusk became a daily task for Achladiotou. It was a task weighted with symbolism and one which gained perhaps even more importance after September 1975, when Turkish provocations (including the raising of a Turkish flag on Ro) against Greece began.

Achladiotou was decorated by the Greek Navy, and received honors from the Defense Ministry, the Athens Academy, the Municipality of Rhodes and other institutions. She died in 1982, aged 92 and was buried on Ro, next to the pole bearing the Greek flag, according to her last wishes.

IN 1943, AFTER THE SURRENDER OF ITALY, THE BRITISH ORDERED THE EVACUATION OF KASTELLORIZO AND THE SURROUNDING AREAS, BUT ACHLADIOTOU REFUSED TO ABANDON HER ISLAND, EVEN AFTER HEAVY GERMAN BOMBARDMENT IN NOVEMBER OF 1943.

LEGEND

© PHOTO FROM EIKONES MAGAZINE, VASOS MIGKOS

Despina with her brother, Michalis, who lived with her for a period, helping her tend to her animals.

“NOW, SHE WANTS HER PEACE...”

In her 1981 book, “Kastellorizo,” author Marie Karioti recounts a particularly pleasant visit to the Lady of Ro. “I WAS TOLD I WOULD FIND HER AT THE HOUSE with the flag. And so it was. Four flags flew on the island every day, from east to west. A large one on the tower, one on the coastguard building, one on the hotel and one on the house belonging to the Lady of Ro. “I went up the steps and found her seated on the wooden sill of her open window.

On the wall of her pristine house was an icon niche with many photographs. Photographs of Athenian celebrities, which she

showed off with pride, and photographs of her relatives, living far away over the seas.

“As I listened to her and watched her, I felt a pride approaching envy for this authentic woman of our land.

“Many years had passed since she married a shepherd and gone to live with him on the island of Ro. They did not have children. Looking at her, I could feel the disappointment that this must have caused her and her husband. I imagined

her anguishing over the thought of a child for hours, days, years, in the loneliness of the house, or while herding her goats and cattle.

“Her husband was good to her; I heard nothing more of his personality. For the winter evenings, the Lady of Ro had five books: a copy of Erotokritos; a hagiography; a biography of the Greek revolutionary hero Tzavellas and two other books whose titles I don’t recall, which she read by the light of a lantern.

“One day, a cow developed a boil on its head. Her husband heated an iron to cauterize it, but the cow reared up and kicked him in the chest. He took to bed and got worse by the day. It was winter, and the sea was rough. A signal was sent... a boat was dispatched, and together they set off for Kastellorizo. On the crossing, he passed away. When the boat reached Kastellorizo harbor, the mourning began.

“Achladiotou stayed on at Kastellorizo for some time, but her livelihood was on the island of Ro. So she returned with a relative. But her heart was still tortured by pain and loneliness and, as if wanting to destroy every last vestige of her former happiness, she threw her five books into the fire, and spent winter alone in front of the fireplace gazing at the flames.

“Every morning she raised the Greek flag, and lowered it at dusk. The captains passing by the island blew the horn in salute, either for the Lady or Ro or for the flag. With the passage of time, this sounding of the ship horns became a tradition.

“And so the years went by. The Lady of Ro eventually went to live in her old house on Kastellorizo. There she raised the flag each morning on her small balcony. One day, suddenly, she became famous and all of Greece talked about her. She got tired though, and now, as she told me, she wants her peace...”

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“THE ENTIRE ISLAND WAS ITSELF A FILM SET.” 74

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Italian actor and scriptwriter Claudio Biglali pours wine in the wedding scene from “Mediterraneo,” with Guiseppe Cerderna as the groom and Vana Barba as the bride.

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Thirty years after “Mediterraneo,” the film that won an Oscar and contributed to Kastellorizo’s fame, the actress Vana Barba, its Greek female lead, talks about the island she encountered then and her hopes of returning there in the future.

BY ELINA DIMITR I A DI

he plot of the film “Mediterraneo,” which is set during WWII, involves a small group of Italian soldiers sent to an isolated Greek island in the Aegean for a few months. There, far from the front and in a setting filled with landscapes whose beauty could only be rivaled by that of the local women, the soldiers experience the island’s slow pace, with touching simplicity and in complete harmony with the locals, creating memories that would make them return, many years later. “Mediterraneo” is much more than a film. It is an ode to peace, friendship and love. It is also a hymn to the film’s real protagonist; the island that stole everyone’s heart – Kastellorizo.

“I owe much to beautiful Kastellorizo,” says Vana Barba. “I owe it all of my existence, for bestowing on ‘Mediterraneo’ and on everyone who worked on this project the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and for making my country famous internationally. I remember being at the Oscars ceremony and looking around to see famous actors and actresses enchanted by what they saw on screen – the crystalline waters and pure beauty of the island. If ‘Mediterraneo’ made it all the way to the Oscars, it was because of the energy of this exceptionally beautiful island, because of its inhabitants who welcomed us with open arms, and because of the unique person and director of the film, Gabriele Salvatores.”

Barba sits opposite me, just as imposing and flowing in her expressions as Vasilissa, the young heroine she portrayed in the film. She tears up as she recounts the story of her return to Kastellorizo, the island that shaped her life and career.

“I had not visited Kastellorizo in over 20 years, since I had first been there to make the film. I went back in 2018 on the occasion of a concert we organized there with Stavros Xarchakos, and I remember the scene as we approached the island as if it were happening now – I remember it and it gives me goosebumps. A small boat adorned with a Greek flag, the island’s inhabitants expecting us at the port, and the end of the film, when one of the heroes returns to the island. As soon as I stepped foot on the island again, I burst into tears. I went to see if the house I lived in still exists, Casa Azzurra, and the lady who owns it recognized me and K A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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invited me in. It was so beautifully preserved. I sat on the steps outside, where I sat in the movie, and cried like a young child, flooded by memories. We ended up drinking ouzo with the locals and, to bring the day to a close, I jumped into the harbor with my clothes on, feeling a sense of redemption as I returned to these pristine waters.”

At a small reunion at a cinema event in Milan in the summer of 2019, Diego Abatantuono, who played the role of the soldier Lorusso, stated that they had visited many islands before finding the ideal setting for the film. “Many times cinema can deceive: with the correct angles, framing and editing, things can be made to look beautiful, even when they aren’t. There, on Kastellorizo, there was nothing to adjust. There was just one street lined with colorful houses, the only bar on the island called Meltemi, which we would visit all the time and sing and dance, and the most amazing waters in which I wanted to swim after every shoot.

It was an extraordinary place and, while I never imagined we’d make it to the Oscars, I knew that, because of the island and its atmosphere, we had created a very special film.”

For Salvatores, “Mediterraneo” is like a child that has grown up, and it is only when you see them again after a long time that you realize how much time has passed. “I remember playing tennis in the harbor, soccer on the dirt runway, doing yoga in the village square. I remember an actor telling me, ‘I’m happy here. When it’s hot, I just take a dip in these waters.

When it is hot in the Cinecittà film studio, what can I do – take a dip in the asphalt?’

Imagine an island that’s almost deserted, with few inhabitants, and 30 crazy people who, in reality, were living a fairytale. I really want us all to return to Kastellorizo together, and open a bottle of wine, like the characters at the end of the film,” he stated at the reunion last year.

Barba tells me that she recently spoke with Abatantuono and he greeted her with a “Ciao, bella!” just like he would every day during filming, because for Italians she is still the beautiful Vasilissa.

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“MANY TIMES CINEMA CAN DECEIVE: WITH THE CORRECT ANGLES, FRAMING AND EDITING, THINGS CAN BE MADE TO LOOK BEAUTIFUL, EVEN WHEN THEY AREN’T. ON KASTELLORIZO, THERE WAS NOTHING TO ADJUST”.

– DIEGO ABATANTUONO

Kastellorizo for all the people involved in the making of the film, planned for 25 March 2021,” she tells me. “It is a dream that I want to see come true. This whole adventure with ‘Mediterraneo‘ began for me by chance, and I ended up spending the two most beautiful months of my life there. The director just happened to run into me at the airport, while he was looking for a girl who looked like me to play the role of a Greek girl in the film, and he asked me to take part. I had just won

the Miss Greece title, and I had started working on films with Nikos Perakis, so I accepted. He bought me an airplane ticket and, as soon as I arrived on the island, I fell in love. The entire island was itself a film set. From the first moment, the entire village worked with us and we all became one. I’ll never forget that feeling.

The Italian production was well organized and offered us meals, but the old ladies of the village would bake pies for us, so nobody really ate the catered food. At night, we would all go to Meltemi for drinks and, when it was hard to wake up in the morning, the director would give us the day off and instead of shooting, he would take us to the olive grove or to the beach on boats, and he would have us bask in the sun and do yoga. That was the energy: calm, beauty and respect.

After each scene, we’d applaud and dive into the sea, the locals following suit; or we’d all admire the twilight, and an erotic atmosphere filled the air, everywhere. We were all in love with each other! And so, through these people and this island, I learned that what truly matters is energy – not money, or attention. Greeks, Italians, and the Turks who had come from Kaş across the way to work as extras, we all lived in harmony. People don’t have issues between them, they can live like this. And art brings people together.”

Throughout our conversation, Barba repeats how much she owes the island and reveals her future plans, since she feels that she has much still to give to the island, and that it’s something she must do. “We’re organizing a concert with composer Stamatis Kraounakis and I really want to recite the ‘Lady of Ro’ – to tell her story, visit her island, to feel and smell it. I will return to Kastellorizo, and I know it will be a moving experience for me once again. As soon as you arrive, there’s an old man with a small transistor radio who invites you to join him and drink a glass of ouzo as he plays songs by Kazantzidis. I want to go and sit with him at the taverna every day, and I also want to go to the taverna Platania again. Last time I was in Kastellorizo, I said I’d like to return and open a taverna and call it ‘Vasilissa.’ Maybe, in the end, that’s what I want out of my life; I may just do that.”

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LEFT: A poster from the film “Mediterraneo.”

02. Giuseppe Cederna and Vana Barba hare a tender moment.

01. Italian director and scriptwriter Gabriele Salvatores (in the middle) directing a scene at the harbor of Kastellorizo.

03. Abatantuono and Italian actor and scriptwriter Claudio Biglali lead the troops in a scene from the film.

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EXPLORE

An island with more personality than square meters awaits visitors at the edge of the map.

BY NATA SH A BL AT SIOU

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THE TOWN

At the hotel Mediterraneo near the end of the harbor, fortunate guests can step straight from their rooms into the crystalline sea.

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E XPLORE

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© NIKOS PILOS

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© NIKOS KOKKALIAS

KORDONI The port’s U-shaped quay consists of a narrow strip, also known as to kordoni, or “the shoelace,” that runs along the entire waterfront of the village, and it’s where most of its activity is concentrated. Shopping, entertainment, leisure – almost every aspect of life plays out at the water’s edge. It takes no time at all to locate all the important spots and to become familiar with the lie of the land.

For most visitors, getting to know the island starts at the pier where the ferryboat docks. Watch how the captain manages to maneuver a 150-meter ship in the 200-meter harbor mouth – it’s quite impressive. There’s almost always some ship docked here, be it a passenger ferry or a navy frigate. It’s not always pleasant as the sound of roaring engines upsets the calm of the waterfront.

The open area in the middle of the harbor, known as Mesi tou Yialou, used to be the epicenter of the community’s social life. Today it is the site of a memorial dedicated to the victims of war, and it’s still where various public events are held.

Most of the rest of the harbor is ringed by a densely packed row of beautiful neoclassical houses whose ground floors are given over to tavernas, cafés and a few souvenir shops. Take a moment to examine the Mercato building, the former fish-and-meat market and an architectural jewel from the Italian occupation. Right beside it, Stratos Café is a strategic stop for coffee lovers – by this point in your travels, you’ll probably have noted the importance of coffee, either iced or hot, to the Greeks!

As you walk along the waterfront, don’t forget to look down into the water now and then; there’s a good chance you’ll spot a sea turtle. In 2009, when a

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01. Every afternoon, children gather to fish or look at the sea turtles that frequent the harbor.

02. The alleyways between the houses are narrow enough for friendly balcony chats.

03. A multitude of cats adds to the island’s charm. © NIKOS PILOS K A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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new marina was built in Kaş on the Turkish coast, dozens of these wonderful creatures were displaced, and they now seek shelter in Kastellorizo’s welcoming harbor. They also come for any spare food from the seaside tavernas, although the practice of throwing them tidbits is not encouraged, not least because they become territorial about feeding grounds and may nip at people swimming in the area.

Another open area on the port leads to a cluster of businesses offering most of the services a traveler might need: there’s a taxi stand for the island’s lone taxi (+30 693.873.9178), the Papoutsis travel office (Tel. (+30) 22460.706.30), a single rental shop with just two motorcycles, a bakery, two supermarkets and public toilets.

As the waterfront curves, the row of houses gives way to a second opening and the Church of Aghios Georgios Pigadiou, or Saint George of the Well. There are another six churches on the island dedicated to Saint George. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with them, as it will help you find your way around. They are Saint George of the Island (Aghios Georgios tou Nisiou), of the Mountain (tou Vounou) and of the Field (tou Horafiou), as well as Aghios Georgios Ftochoulaki (the Poor) and Aghios Georgios tis Ro (of Ro). Back at Aghios Georgios Pigadiou, you’ll also find Remezzo, the island’s best café-bar for local sweets, a glass of beer or other refreshments.

All of the tiny streets that lead off from the harbor are worth exploring, as they take you into pretty neighborhoods like the charming Aghios Merkourios area, with its abandoned buildings (including the former ice factory), beautifully restored mansions and flower-filled courtyards. Daily life takes place here in the narrow alleys that end in shared outdoor spaces and behind the windows through which you can’t help but peek. With the residences so close together, there’s a communal feeling that may help to ex-

The view of Kavos from the Hotel Megisti. The water in the middle of the harbor is up to 12 meters deep.

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01. The seafood is excellent at all the restaurants ringing the harbor. | 02. The interior of an old house, now home to the offices of Kazbar Realty. © NIKOS KOKKALIAS

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HUNGRY YET?

As you’ll see by the boats in the harbor, only a handful of the islanders still fish professionally, but there are enough of them to ensure that the tavernas are well-stocked with fresh seafood. All the tavernas are family-run businesses and each has its own character. You’ll find that things here are a bit more expensive than you might expect, so ask to see the menu before you decide where to eat. At the seafood taverna BILLY’S, we enjoyed small shrimp and the grilled sargo, or white seabream.

AGORA (Tel. (+30) 22460.491.38) is an honest little eatery known for its souvlaki; it also serves takeaway.

At LAZARAKIS (Tel. (+30) 693.236.0273), located right on the harbor, the dishes are more upmarket and include very good octopus, tuna carpaccio and seafood pasta. At ALEXANDRA, you’ll find good food, good service and a great atmosphere, and some spontaneous merrymaking may very well break out during your meal. Mikro Parisi, or LITTLE PARIS (Tel. (+30) 697.670.4588) is on the quieter side of the harbor.

We enjoyed the grilled flathead grey mullet and the fish soup; while the service was slow, owner Irini and her brother Michalis were so delightful we came back a second time.

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plain the reputation of the islanders as inveterate gossips.

Back at the Kordoni, you’ll find Pera Meria, a quieter part of the main town, where the buildings, not as closely packed, are better able to show off their architectural attributes and pleasing colors. The famous Blue House, featured in the film “Mediterraneo,” is near the end of the quay, along with the iconic hotel Mediterraneo and the Hotel Megisti, at both of which you can dive into the sea just meters away from your bed.

Just past the Hotel Megisti at one end of the harbor is a small building that looks like a church but isn’t. Known as the Gazadika, it was once a warehouse for fuel but is now the studio of sculptor Alexandros Zigouris.

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From the Castle of the Knights you can look out across the Megisti Archipelago to the seaside town of Kaş, in Turkey.

KAVOS As evidenced by the castle that dominates it, unmissable with its Greek flag waving prominently above it, the Kavos headland has always been a strategic observation point. Located between two of the island’s three natural harbors, and with a clear view of the Megisti island group and the eastern sea corridor, it was home to wealthy shipowners and captains.

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ered with stately three-story houses. Today, as you wander among the restored villas, you’ll also walk past ruined structures that nonetheless give you an idea of the layouts of these lost houses.

In this small area, there’s much to learn of the island’s history, starting with the Castle of the Knights of Saint John, whose sobriquet of Castello Rosso gave the island its name. This castle features in the descriptions given by nearly all travelers who wrote of Kastellorizo. Built in the 14th century with materials from an

ancient acropolis, today it consists only of a fortified courtyard and ruins of its interior space. Nonetheless, the spot affords splendid panoramic views of Aghios Stefanos in the north, Cape Nifti in the west, and Paliokastro and Avlonia inland. You can also see many of the small islands that make up the group: Psoradia, Kalikatzaraki and its twin Aghios Georgios, Polyfados, Psomi, Koutsoumbas, Mavropini and Mavropinaki (the last three mark the border with Turkey).

Take the road past the old windmill –

EXPLORE

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perimeter of Kavos, you’ll come across the 4th-century BC Lycian Tomb, which points to the close ties that have existed between the island and its Anatolian neighbors since ancient times. The view to the Turkish coast and Kaş (known in Greek as Antiphellos) from that path, which leads to the small harbor of Mandraki, is quite lovely.

INFO

Kastellorizo Archaeological Museum (Tel. (+30) 22460.492.83) and the Historical Collection (Tel. (+30) 22460.

706.20) are open daily except Tuesdays 09:00-16:00. The 21-minute “Kastellorizo Then and Now” video is screened at 12:00 and again at 14:00.

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area around the castle was inhabited by a small Muslim community and you can still see examples of Ottoman architecture in the restored hamam baths, in the ruins of the school, and in the mosque, which is on the lane leading down to the port, sandwiched between Italian-era administrative buildings. Today the mosque is home to the Kastellorizo Historical Collection, which provides valuable insights into life during the island’s more prosperous past. The collection of documents, photographs and memorabilia is beautifully arranged into a narrative stretching from the 19th century until the island’s integration into the Greek state in 1948. Do not miss the screening of the excellent video “Kastellorizo Then and Now” (in Greek with English subtitles).

If you take the path around the outer

slated for restoration – and the churches of Aghios Nikolaos and Aghios Dimitrios to reach the Kastellorizo Archaeological Museum, housed in one of the castle’s forts. It contains finds from the island dating back to antiquity, as well as Byzantine relics, artifacts recovered from the sea, testimonials from foreign travelers, murals from the Church of Saint George of the Castle and an entire hall dedicated to the island’s folk art and culture. The ground floor focuses on maritime history.

Back in the late 18th century, the

MANDRAKI The island’s second port used to be abuzz with the business of boat-building, as you can see from the slipways in the shallows used for pulling boats and hydroplanes out of the water, and from the remains of an old steam mill. Now it’s the quietest part of Kastellorizo, with just one small shipyard that only operates for boat repairs. Mandraki has a small church dedicated to Saint Paraskevi, and a large cemetery, named after Saint Savvas, that contains the graves of locals as well as of French soldiers from WWI. The island’s only gas station is at the end of the road here, though this information is irrelevant for most visitors, as motorized transport is rarely needed here.

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EXPLORE

HORAFIA Horafia, which means “fields” in Greek, is the area where the residents of Kastellorizo once had their family farms. Today, it is the island’s religious and educational center, home to the Cathedral of Saints Constantine and Helena on one side of a pretty pebbled courtyard and, opposite it, the Santrape Town School and the Girl’s School (Parthenagogio). The Town School was endowed by Loukas Santrape (1852-1911), a wealthy contractor who had worked on irrigation systems in Egypt. He was also the benefactor of the Church of Aghios Georgios in Horafia, an impressive eclectic-style edifice that was never completed but is soon to be restored. There are two more houses 01. The Horafia district, the island’s religious and educational center, is home to its most important buildings and monuments.

of worship in the immediate area – the church of Panaghia Horafiou and that of Aghios Spyridonas, and an impressive bust of the Lady of Ro, a woman who raised the Greek flag over the islet of Ro every day for decades, affirming Greek sovereignty with her action.

Among the other buildings in Horafia is the traditional taverna Platania (Tel. (+30) 22460.492.06). Now in operation for 35 years, and one of the locations used in the film “Mediterraneo,” the taverna is presently run by two sisters and a daughter. These tireless women prepare an array of delicious home-style dishes every day, cooking up dolmadakia (stuffed vine leaves), pots of goat meat, chickpea fritters and octopus in tomato sauce.

02. The taverna Platania is a traditional eatery that serves excellent Greek food and wine in a nostalgic setting.

03. The interior of the Church of Aghios Georgios tou Horafiou, scheduled for restoration.

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MUSEUM OF PUZZLES

The rainbow-painted path behind the Church of Aghios Georgios tou Horafiou will lead you to Greece’s only Museum of Puzzles. The brainchild of mathematician and puzzle-maker Pantazis Houlis, it presents young and old with clever cerebral teasers. Born in the Australian city of Perth but raised on Kastellorizo, Houlis realized his dream in 2012 when he opened a museum dedicated to puzzles. He is an avid puzzle collector and has amassed one of the largest collections in the world, with over 4,000 items, a number of which he designed himself. Apart from being an active member of the International Puzzle Party, he is also an excellent tour guide with an in-depth knowledge of Kastellorizo’s paths and trails (see Hiking Trails). © NIKOS PILOS

INFO

Open Mon., Tue. & Thu. 16:00-18:00, kastellorizo.net, Tel. (+30) 698.086.5814

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THE COUNTRYSIDE

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EVEN THOUGH THE ISLAND’S cosmopolitan harbor town tends to steal the show, the rocky countryside – rarely explored by visitors or even archaeologists – is in itself reason enough to make the trip to Kastellorizo. The sheer cliffs and craggy passes, reminiscent of the foothills of a large mountain range, mean that you’ll need to expend some effort while exploring, but you’ll be rewarded with the sight of native flora and fauna (including delightful little tortoises) and ruins from different historical periods.

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AGHIOS GEORGIOS TOU VOUNOU

(SAINT GEORGE OF THE MOUNTAIN)

An ascent of some 400 steps starting at the top of the town takes you up the mountainside to the monastery, giving you a taste of the island’s wild landscape and glimpses at the remains of ancient grape stomping pits, funerary monuments and fortifications. The recently restored monastery is surrounded by a high wall, which encompasses the katholikon, cells and auxiliary spaces built around a courtyard with a pebbled floor.

The basement crypt inside the church is quite interesting and is dedicated to Saint Charalambos. If you want to look inside, you’ll need to arrange your visit with the island’s taxi driver, as he has the keys to the monastery (Tel. (+30) 693.873.9178).

01. On the plateau that leads to the Monastery of Aghios Georgios tou Vounou.

02. The Chapel of Aghios Stefanos in Paliokastro.

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sures testify to the island’s turbulent past and its strategic importance, the latter a fact unchanged through history.

THE HIKING TRAILS

The island recently acquired signposting for two short hiking trail networks: one around Aghios Georgios tou Vounou and Avlonia in the south and the other around the cape of Aghios Stefanos to the north. However, there are many more trails known to the locals, including Pantazis Houlis (see The Puzzle Museum), who is always ready to help with tips and directions or even to accompany hikers.

The best time to visit the site of the ancient acropolis is in the late afternoon, just before the sun sets behind the small island of Ro. From here, the views out to sea and back over the village are amazing. Paliokastro served as the center of the island’s ancient fortification system, and was in use until the Middle Ages. It served as an excellent vantage point to observe activity in the harbor and along the seaways, and it was also a part of an information system (known as phryctoria, it used fires that transmitted signals between towers) that reached as far as the islets of Strongyli and Ro, and the coast of Asia Minor. The acropolis was surrounded by walls and had large water tanks cut into big rocks. The fortified towers, the cisterns and the Italian cannon embra-

INFO

There are no more than 10 kilometers’ worth of paved roads on the island and you’ll see more people traveling them by foot than by car. The further away you get from the main settlement, the more obvious the military presence becomes, so keep an eye out when you’re out walking and hiking (and when you’re about to take pictures) for military facilities such as guard posts and roads that are off-limits.

GUIDED TOURS

ELENI KARAVELATZI is not a profes-

sional guide, but she is a young person who loves the island and enjoys sharing its secrets with visitors. On her website, visitkastellorizo.com, you can find all sorts of information and tips for interesting walks and sea tours, or you can contact her (Tel. (+30) 697.709.2616) and ask for a tailor-made package that includes excursions to less popular destinations, including the islet of Ro.

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PALIOKASTRO

Houlis took us on a two-hour walk with impressive variations in the landscape and terrain. We saw stone structures and sections affording views of the sea below. The trail starts at the airport, goes through a field owned by the Myriklis family – containing the ruins of an old house and a large carob tree – and along ancient paths meandering among walls and deep cisterns. The path above the Blue Grotto was a highlight, thanks to the marvelous view out to Strongyli. The trail back starts here and runs across a red dirt plateau before joining the main road as it heads towards the area known as Kiolia.

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TRUE BLUE

Italian photographer Paolo Zanoni captures astounding underwater scenes off Kastellorizo.

BY NATA SH A BL AT SIOU

Free diving near the Blue Grotto. The cave lies on the southeast coast of the island, and is known locally as “Phokialí” (Greek for “Seal’s refuge”). The light of the sun, refracted through the sea, is reflected in the interior of the grotto, producing a dazzling shade of blue. The cave is also famous for its stalactites and as a hideaway for the Mediterranean monk seal, or Μonachus monachus.

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t the center of Paolo Zanoni’s work are free divers – humans and animals. His intention is to capture the feeling of well-being and intimacy that humans feel in the sea, as well as the absence of bodily perception that occurs when divers become one with the water.

Emotionally attached to Kastellorizo (it was the first place where he began to explore his passion back in 2011), the avid underwater photographer keeps returning to document its underwater life.

“Kastellorizo is a wonderful kaleidoscope. We pass from the almost transparent light near Plakes to the turquoise shades of the waters near Aghios Georgios; from the cobalt blue around the Blue Grotto, which suddenly turns black when you turn away, to the intense blue of the depths. The water in summer is particularly warm, causing the mind and body to relax, which so fundamental to free diving. But there’s also the opportunity to encounter elusive marine animals, including the Caretta caretta loggerhead sea turtle and the Mediterranean monk seal.

My dream is to share a boat with some local fishermen in order to document this traditional activity that has proven so important to the island through the centuries. An even more ambitious aspiration is to capture on film the Mediterranean monk seal I spotted in the Blue Grotto on my first year on the island.” - N.B.

The photographer dedicates this work to the memory of his wife, Roberta Conca.

01. A Caretta caretta sea turtle in the waters of Kastellorizo. This species can be found in oceans around the world; in the Mediterranean, its status was recently upgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable.” A very good diver, it’s able to stay under water for more than three hours.

02. The waters off Kastellorizo are teeming with fish.

03. Ancient amphora. Artifacts recovered on or around Kastellorizo date all the way back to the early Neolithic era.

04. Clear waters near the shore at Plakes Bay.

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THE SEA

NO SAND IN SIGHT The absence of beaches is another thing that makes this island unlike others; it is literally a rock in the water. Visitors and residents usually swim at either end of the 94

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harbor: to the west, Gazadika or, further still and serviced by sea taxis, Plakes; and to the east, nearby Sfageia or Faros. The snorkeling is very good, with a wealth of marine life and the impressive sight of sheer underwater rock faces plunging downward. The depth in the middle of the port, meanwhile, is 12 meters.

The islet of Aghios Georgios, near the

harbor entrance, is the most popular spot for swimming even though it can only be reached by private boat or sea taxi. The seafront patios there have umbrellas and loungers and visitors can enjoy a meal, too, as there’s a taverna on the islet run

by Tsikos and his Turkish wife Hurigul; the couple has become a welcome symbol of love and friendship following the

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The islet of Aghios Georgios has a pretty little bay that attracts locals and tourists alike. There’s a taverna there that also rents sun loungers.

tensions between the two neighboring nations this summer.

One of the best ways to tour the island and really appreciate its natural beauty is by boat. Tours start at the port, with optional stops at Navlakas for a swim and, after a visit to the Blue Grotto and the Kolones Cave, the boats usually head either to Aghios Stefanos and Plakes, or to

Aghios Georgios. For many, a visit to the Blue Grotto is the highlight of their trip to Kastellorizo. The entrance to this sea cave is just big enough to accommodate a small boat, but the interior of the grotto is 35 meters high, 75m long and 40m wide.

The cave is awash in a blue hue caused by the morning sunlight that reaches it through the water. The stunning color of

the water and the cave walls makes this a memorable experience.

Prices start at €10 per person for the Blue Grotto and €20 per person for the full tour. For Plakes or Aghios Georgios alone, the trip costs €5 per person roundtrip. Excursions to Kaş, normally available from the port, were cancelled this year because of the health crisis.

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Kastellorizo through the eyes of its faithful summer guests.

A colorful breakfast at the hotel Mediterraneo.

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IMPRESSIONS

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NICOLETTA FIORUCCI

NIKOS TRIVOULIDIS

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first visited Kastellorizo 20 years ago, flying in from Rhodes on a 15-seat Olympic Airlines puddle-jumper. The landing at the airstrip on a mountain plateau was one of the most adventurous I’d experienced.

A scene of unbelievable beauty unfolded before my eyes, framed by the sea and the mountains of Lycia in Turkey across the way, in the most bizarre game of geography I’d ever seen, as mountains and boundaries became all tangled up in an odd trick of perspective.

I fell in love with Kastellorizo, and now I return every summer. Each time I arrive, I feel that same joy, undiminished and equally peculiar – each time I look down on the walks I’ve taken to the castle and the monasteries on the mountain; each time I enter or leave the port by boat; and each time I go out rambling with no particular destination in mind, exchang98

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ing good mornings, good evenings, and buona seratas on the narrow Kordoni, the walkway along the harbor, hoping it will never have to suffer the unfortunate “progress” of megalomaniac expansion and will, instead, be left to survive as it has for ages.

I fell in love with Kastellorizo, which rewarded me in turn by revealing its people to me, the remnants of its history, its cosmopolitan youth, the colonists of its past and those of the present. Like a novel by Borges that weaves multiple plotlines together, each summer, every so often, a new story unfolds.

For many years, I experienced the island from “Marie’s Pillows,” the downstairs room at the hotel Mediterraneo at the edge of the harbor. The room seems almost to be floating, with three large arches, which I would pass through all day long, going out to dive into the wa-

NICOLETTA FIORUCCI Collector, founder of The Fiorucci Art Trust

The first time I visited the island, I was 13 years old, and I’m now 63. The first images I saw were of an island destroyed.

Having decided to build a house here, I also felt a responsibility to restore some of its monuments, such as the Turkish bath and the old fish market (mercato dei pesci), a building by the Italian architect Rodolfo Petracco, who designed public markets across the Dodecanese. In all aspects, our interventions were conservative, with respect for the charm evoked by their original form. In the case of an old house in the harbor, our restoration was done with a more modern look, since only a plain shell was left, without traces of the past.

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IMPRESSIONS

MARIANGELA MANZONI

ter (yes, right there at the port), making playlists and listening to them, lying and gazing out at the same beautiful scene, like a painting: the small mosque, the spiral staircase at the top of the Port Police, the neoclassical buildings along the waterfront. I would spend all day waiting for a single moment: that instant when night would enter the body of day, the split second when the electric lamps would come alive all at once.

Little Kastellorizo proved to be rich in pleasures. I remember, in random order: meals out under the plane trees at Ta Platania, in the town’s upper square, where dishes are served on tables covered in flowered tablecloths; invitations to parties at the three houses of Ascania Baldasseroni and her late husband, Michele Spadafora, Prince of Palermo, each with its own outdoor sofa around a Sicilian fountain; and the yearly dinner party on

the water at the beautiful home of Katerina Stouraiti-Mezzedimi, Greek consul in Djibouti, and her architect husband Sergio, featuring the spicy chicken doro wat prepared by her Ethiopian cook. Or our evening outings along the Kordoni: Konstantis and Pantelis, sons of Stratos and Amalia, grew up and took over Stratos Café, where they serve amazing cocktails. Ilias, son of Nikitas, also took over the helm of the family taverna of the same name and makes incredible profiteroles. Kyriakos at Billy’s fish taverna, Vangelis at Alexandra’s taverna, Giorgos at Lazarakis and Nikos at Athena fish taverna compete every day to see who can best master the art of cooking fish. And at Radio Café, time always moves slowly.

Kastellorizo is both cosmopolitan and entirely, characteristically Greek – and those two sides come together most at night, in the island’s houses and gardens.

MARIANGELA MANZONI Architect

Life in Kastellorizo was quite difficult when I arrived in 1981. The population was very poor, and not even their basic needs were being met. Most important of all was the lack of fresh water, which was only available for two hours, three times a week. In the summer they sometimes brought in additional water and filled water tanks using pipes that had to be transported from one house to the other. In those days, the locals didn’t have televisions yet, but they knew how to tell fascinating stories. When it was cold, they’d gather in those cafés that had stoves and tell each other stories for hours.

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SILVIA FIORUCCI

Collector, founder of the NGO La Societa delle Api (The Bee Society)

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“HORAFIA II” BY MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES

ASCANIA BALDASSERONI

At the beautiful home of the Frenchman Luc Lejeune and his Vietnamese husband Vu Dinh Hung, chef at the Athenian restaurant Madame Phu Man Chu, evenings include everything from an introduction to Vietnamese cuisine to the occasional Shaolin choreography. Under Dina’s bougainvillea the conversations never end, spinning through the summer air like the blades of a fan. Once a year, Stefano hosts a performance that’s been in preparation all year long in Italy, and travels to the island for this single event.

Every so often Andreas and Lena host a dinner party that feels like a truly Greek embrace on their garden terrace near the castle, and each time, at some point, the breeze seems to die down and everything stands still, including the lights at the harbor in the distance. The gardens of Despina and Brian (who likes to be called Vyronas) or of the Australian Collin (who likes to be called Kostas) host guest chef appearances by Simone and Evana. In the yard shared by Davide Latilla (son of Carla Boni and Gino Latilla, bygone stars

LITTLE KASTELLORIZO PROVED TO BE RICH IN PLEASURES. I REMEMBER MEALS OUT UNDER THE PLANE TREES AT PLATANIA, IN THE TOWN’S UPPER SQUARE, WHERE DISHES ARE SERVED ON TABLES COVERED IN FLOWERED TABLECLOTHS. 100

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As Italians, we have always felt welcome in Kastellorizo. Twenty-five years ago, when my then husband and I came and decided it was the perfect place to buy a house, you could still meet old residents who had learned Italian at school and enjoyed talking to us. Over the years, we bought a second house, and then a third one.

The family grew, and my sons also loved Kastellorizo; I hope that my granddaughters will continue the tradition, since they have also grown up here, in a way.

The Casa dell’Ulivo project is my way of offering something to the island; a house in Pera Meria and its neighboring ruins, which I bought, will host artistic activities and, in the future, will be used for artist residencies as well.

The island must stay in step with the times, but memory must be preserved as well, and even more in a place like this, which has become a tourist attraction only in recent years. Its history and its inhabitants deserve to be appreciated by this and future generations.

ASCANIA BALDASSERONI Journalist

I’ve been coming to the island since 1978, and I’m one of the first Italians who bought a house here. I’ve never been worried about the island’s proximity to Turkey, and in fact I like the idea that I can go shopping in the flea markets over there.

It is clear to me, after all: Kastellorizo is Europe. I do not mean that it isn’t Greek, but that it belongs to the European family.

I recently created the online magazine “afabulouslife” with the channel “afabulouslife.tv”. There is a section called “A Fabulous Island - Lettere dal Kastellorizo” there, and I upload videos from life on the island. These videos feature island cooking, gatherings with friends that turn into small celebrations with dancing and singing, and stories of people and things from the island.

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IMPRESSIONS

THE PRESIDENT OF THE HELLENIC REPUBLIC KATERINA SAKELLAROPOULOU WITH MASSIMO & AGOSTINA PARADISI

of the Italian singing world) and Angela Piergallini from Padua (a skilled oud player), Massimo and Angostina are careful not to miss a single step of the hasapiko they learned at a dance school.

And then there are all the stories I’ve heard! How could I possibly choose which to share first? Ludina Barzini telling us how her grandfather Luigi drove race cars at rallies in Mongolia with King Victor Emmanuel III. Dr Evangelos Hatzigiannakis talking about the fire on the “Empire Patrol,” which was bringing Kastellorizo refugees back from Gaza to the island.

The artist Lynda Benglis relating stories about Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1960s New York. Sergio Mezzedimi describing his architect father Arturo’s relationship with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.

Collin hesitantly sharing family Super 8 102

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footage showing Stelios Kazantzidis and a young Vicky Moscholiou, who had once ended up at a barbecue in his parents’ backyard while touring in Australia!

There are, of course, the things that never change from summer to summer.

The waters at the beach of Aghios Georgios, Plakes, Nifti and Frangolimnionas, diving into the water at the Blue Grotto, the mythical seal that no one has seen (yet everyone knows someone who has), the turtles swimming in the harbor, the full moon party celebrated in boats each August, with mojitos that theatre director Christos Lygas mixes in a tin bucket… And if I had to choose one of these timeless beauties, it would be the sunset as seen from Paliokastro, from among those Cyclopean walls, ruined wells and churches. Kastellorizo, so distant from

mainland Greece, between Rhodes and Cyprus, opposite the southernmost part of the Asia Minor peninsula, is positioned so that one can see the sun setting over Turkey, which we’re used to thinking of as the East. So you think you’re seeing the sun setting in the East. It’s as if image and place have melded. You don’t wonder what it’s doing there. You wonder at the fact that it was always there.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NIKOS TRIVOULIDIS is the Director of Fundraising and Development of the Benaki Museum.

STEFANO RYAN AND ENRICA SUTRINI

@KASTELLORIZOFRIENDS

PERSONAL ARCHIVE

IMPRESSIONS

Entrepreneurs

I stopped in Kastellorizo in 1977, when the sail of our sailboat was damaged while my father and I were on vacation.

The place was unspoilt – and the ruins so numerous, that you had the feeling that the war had just recently ended. In 1982, I made the first attempts to find a property to buy but I ran into the complicated property ownership situation. I tried again in 1989, and finally succeeded in 1998.

Since then, I have reminded myself what a big decision we made, choosing this island among so many other beautiful places that we had visited. In Kastellorizo, I was attracted by its isolated beauty and its location between Greece and Turkey, Europe and Asia Minor, and I was fascinated by the rich history of the Levant, too.

Although today Kastellorizo is different and, to a degree, perhaps a little “out of season,” as it were, it still gives you the feeling that you are on a private island.

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STEFANO RYAN AND ENRICA SUTRINI

KATERINA MEZZEDIMI

Honorary Consul of Greece in Djibouti

MASSIMO AND AGOSTINA PARADISI

MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES London-based Artist/Designer

Retirees

The greatest concern of all those who have invested in the island is that it not alter its basic physiognomy. Renovation projects are essential, but Kastellorizo does not need, for example, a modern waterfront. We must respect the traditional settlement and the past of the place, and studies must be undertaken by knowledgeable people who will be able to implement modernization projects without destroying the island’s aesthetics.

The movie “Mediterraneo” was that which aroused our curiosity and made us want to see Kastellorizo up close, even though we knew it was a remote island that was really difficult to reach. Once we saw it, it was “love at first sight”. In 2006, our dream came true: all these years, we had wanted to spend much of our old age in this paradise of Greece.

One thing is missing from Kastellorizo, and that’s a large European flag next to the many Greek ones that are everywhere on the island, an imposing flag that would make it clear to anyone who causes or disturbs the calm in the region that in front of him/her is not a small, weak Greek island but the whole of Europe.

What I loved about Kastellorizo was its simplicity. I loved its dramatic landscape, the numerous walks (since there are hardly any cars), and its tranquility in the absence of nightlife. I enjoyed swimming there, and exploring its rocky countryside.

In fact, a walk on the island became the motive for the creation of two sculptures called “Horafia I” and “Horafia II,” which I presented at my first solo exhibition the year before last at the Taka Ishii Gallery in Hong Kong, as part of the Art Basel in Hong Kong show. The objects represent two palm tree trunks I saw outside a house on the island; their owners had turned them into stools.

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CARRYING ON Time and again, this island’s resolve has been tested, but its people have always risen to the challenge.

BY NATA SH A BL AT SIOU / P HOTOS: N I KOS P I L OS

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Evana Natalia Tanner, a sixthgeneration Kastellorizian, and her Italian husband Simone Spezia spent more than seven months enjoying life on the island.

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t 86, Maria Lazaraki is one of the oldest people on Kastellorizo and a witness to history. I find her on the waterfront, sitting at her family’s taverna after she’s returned from a walk to collect vine leaves for the dolmades on the day’s menu. Like most women of her generation, she is dressed in mourning, yet her ornate gold earrings and a necklace with a pendant indicate that she hasn’t abandoned all coquetry. Time has been kind to her; her clear blue eyes are constantly flitting here and there, and her mind is as sharp as a whip.

The tonal variations of the local dialect add poetry to her dramatic tales of deracination and strife. She tells me in detail of the day the Allies took the island in 1943 and how the Germans responded with air raids, destroying two of the town’s most populous neighborhoods.

The bombing forced 1,100 residents to board ships that took them to Cyprus or the adjacent Turkish coast, before they were eventually transferred to the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Gaza, where they spent the next two years.

The journey back home was marked by more tragedy. “It was six in the morning, September 29, 1945. An alarm sounded at the camp. We were going back to the island. There was laughter and joy. Sixty miles outside Port Said, a fire broke out on the SS Empire Patrol. My mother and siblings were down below.

I screamed: ‘Get up here! Fire!’ Young girls were lost. Women drowned with babies in their arms. Old women who couldn’t run burned alive. Thirty-three people perished.” A marble column just a few meters from where we’re sitting lists their names.

01. With sunshine on most days of the year, sheets and other laundry items dry quickly outside.

02. At the taverna Platania, Maria Kokala helps students from the school next door.

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03. Despina Misomike, aged 83, prepares filo dough for the traditional local sweet katoumari.

04. Today, there are only a few professional fishermen left on the island.

HAUNTED BY TRAUMA A sheet of fine filo pastry twists through the air before landing gently on the wooden table. Despina Misomike, 83, is a master at katoumari, a local dessert whose roots have been lost in time.

“It’s just humble ingredients – sugar, butter and flour – but the art is in the opening of the filo,” she tells me with the confidence of an old hand. Memorabilia gracing the walls of her home paint a clear picture of this small community: her mother’s wedding, captured in a photo taken in front of the school at the turn of the 20th century; the handwritten banns of her own marriage, once posted in the village; an embroidered blessing in a frame. She, too, experienced the Empire Patrol fire, but also remembers the grand homecoming: “Our enthusiasm swelled as the ship got nearer to

port. Home…,” she says, the memory clearly still vivid.

They were met by ruins as they disembarked. The island was wrecked, the homes rendered uninhabitable by bombs and fires. Many Kastellorizians followed family members who’d already emigrated to Australia, while others left for Rhodes and Athens. But there were also the heroes who stayed, toiling to rebuild the island. Despina’s family decided to stay.

That moment marked the start of a battle for survival waged by the island’s shrunken population, a struggle that lasted 40 years. The island needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. The destruction of so many properties forced those who decided to stay to repair and move into houses that were in slightly better shape, even if they weren’t theirs. This caused a tremendous amount of confu-

sion with inheritance and property rights and caused no small amount of friction in the community.

Largely cut off from the Turkish coast with which they had always maintained traditional ties and where part of their assets lay, and with Rhodes 72 nautical miles away, they had to rely on the barest of resources. Traditionally middle class and well-to-do, they’d never grown fruits or vegetables in the arid soil; this was a mercantile society that had lost its footing and was now cut off from every source of sustenance, often for weeks on end. Misomike remembers the arrival of the ship from Rhodes, the island’s only connection to the outside world, in those days. There were times when the weather did not allow it to tie up and loaves of bread were just thrown onto the shore; there were times when it did tie up and island residents would fight each other over a cucumber.

“We’d cut them in half, so everyone could get some,” she recalls.

What compelled them to stay in poverty among the ruins? They had family in Australia. They had incentives from the state to relocate elsewhere. I pressed this question with both the ladies. They sidestepped it. I only got my answer on the day I left Kastellorizo (see my postscript).

AFTER THE CREDITS ROLLED The taverna Platania in Horafia is abuzz with activity. Maria and Katina Magiafi and Katina’s daughter Maria Kokala are all busy at work preparing the dishes of the day. Still, there is a companionable mood in the spacious kitchen, one that invites you to spend hours here listening to stories, exchanging banter and nibbling from all the steaming pots and pans as they come off the stove-top or out of the oven.

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photographs from “Mediterraneo,” the WWII film that took the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991. The film was momentous for Kastellorizo, and Katina remembers the days when it was being filmed on the island as some of the best in her life. “The entire island worked on the film, and we all got paid.

And once the shooting was over, they left us with the island’s greatest modern legacy: tourism.”

The film, and its success, established Kastellorizo as a vacation destination.

The Italian cast and crew became its ambassadors and most returned for summer stays. Many even bought second homes here. Hot on the heels of the Italians came the French and then the British. Those who fall in love with the island do so passionately, and come again and again. The construction of an airport made access much easier, while Kastellorizians who had emigrated to Australia and other parts of the world also started coming back, drawn by a love for their roots. The strong diaspora 108

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community, who had maintained their ties with the island and helped support its residents financially, started restoring the abandoned houses (and reopened old property disputes in the process).

The town gradually began acquiring its present shape. The number of ruins shrank, and old neighborhoods came back to life. Staircases, entrance ways, and door knobs and knockers gave a new shine to old wealth. Architectural details that testified to the island’s cosmopolitan history were restored, and newly built houses adhered to old aesthetic principles. The waterfront promenade – the Kordoni (“Shoelace”) – was transformed into a hub of summer activity, the place where everything happened.

In the meantime, the opening of the borders with Turkey in the last decade gave tourism an even greater boost, while the farmers’ markets at Kaş (Antiphellos to Greeks) became accessible again, as they’d been in pre-war times, offsetting the difficulties of relying on supplies from Rhodes. There’s a small boat that takes

“GROWING UP ON SUCH A SMALL ISLAND IS PARADISE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN, BUT IT GETS MUCH HARDER AS THEY GET OLDER” SAYS BETTY MOUZAK, PRINCIPAL OF THE MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL.

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the islanders across to the weekly market and on other supply runs to the traditional Turkish bazaars. Some Kastellorizians even have homes on the Turkish coast – as they’d had before the war. Vacation packages and excursions in both directions haven’t just generated income for those involved, they’ve created powerful bonds of friendship and even, on occasion, marriages.

The fact that Kastellorizo marks the farthest reach of Europe, the absolute border between West and East, and a literal and metaphorical body of immense geostrategic importance in the Aegean Sea are issues that – as is often the case on frontiers all over the world – are of more concern to analysts than to the locals.

One of the many people who arrived on the cosmopolitan wind of tourism was French architect Marie Rivalant, who opened the hotel Mediterraneo in the 1990s. This boutique hotel offers the kind of vacation many visitors hope for on Kastellorizo: understated luxury and a bed that’s only meters from the sea. I

meet her on the veranda where guests have their breakfast. In this tiny community, she stands out as a foreigner, though she has become something of a local after marrying Kastellorizian Giorgos Lazarakis.

“I’ll always be foreign,” she acnowledges.

“But there’s nothing wrong with that,” she adds, laughing. She brings me a glass of water and another of cold lemonade. “It is not just the architecture or the landscape that makes the island so alluring; it’s also the effort needed to get here,” she says. “You feel that you’re rewarded for the journey.”

I enjoy the view of the landscape from the hotel’s veranda, a scene packed with “Greekness,” and wonder if this is why the then prime minister chose the last spot in Europe as the place to announce that Greece was entering the International Monetary Fund bailout mechanism in the spring of 2010. How can anyone stay focused on such bad news when there’s so much beauty in the background? Maybe this is why the Kastellorizians have withstood so much misery and hardship: the beauty.

THE NEW ORDER Kastellorizo’s school, named after benefactor Loukas Santrape, is an interesting historical monument. Its façade was designed to replicate the University of Athens, and it was inaugurated in 1903 by its founder who hoped to provide a high-caliber education to local pupils by employing teachers from Athens, Rhodes and Asia Minor as well as from the island.

Today, it has 40 students ranging from elementary to high-school age. “Growing up on such a small island is paradise for young children, but it gets much harder as they get older. They don’t have the same educational opportunities as children in the rest of Greece, such as additional learning and extracurricular

LEFT: The island’s historic school has approximately 40 students in total.

RIGHT: The architect Fotini Chalvantzi poses for a photo at her favorite spot in town, the Municipal Market building.

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Marie Rivalant, the French owner of the hotel Mediterraneo, on the veranda where breakfast is served.

activities,” says Betty Mouzak, principal of the middle and high school. Only a handful will pursue university studies after graduating, and most of the children will stay on the island, secure that they’ll have a job in tourism, a promising field despite the current pandemic.

There’s a lot of potential for growth and development in Kastellorizo; to take just one example, the Municipal Market is ripe for better utilization. Built under Italian rule, it’s a fascinating building, and

“IT’S THE ISLAND THAT MAKES THE PLANS HERE, NOT YOU,” THE OWNER OF MY HOTEL SAID STOICALLY, SHARING NONE OF MY FRUSTRATION ABOUT MY CANCELED FLIGHT, EVEN THOUGH HER PLANS HAD ALSO BEEN UPSET.

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the favorite spot of Fotini Chalvantzi. This young architect, who forged ties with Kastellorizo eight years ago while overseeing a restoration project at the Monastery of Aghios Georgios tou Vounou, currently works on residential restoration and is doing her PhD on the architecture of the town. Our conversation focused on the island’s future.

“Kastellorizo is on the tourist map for one-off and repeat visitors, day-trippers from Turkey, and foreign nationals and members of the diaspora who own summer homes here. As it grows in popularity, it finds itself at a critical juncture that will determine its evolution. Construction activity needs to be carried out under the proper conditions, with respect for

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Maria Lazaraki, aged 86, remembers the twists and turns of the island’s post-war history.

walking trails, uncharted history and a wealth of flora, Kastellorizo is a destination aching to be discovered but begging to be protected, too.

POSTSCRIPT My departure flight was canceled and I had to spend an additional three days on the island. Such occurrences are, it seems, quite common. “It’s the island that makes the plans here, not you,” the owner of my hotel said stoically, sharing none of my frustration, even though her plans had also been upset.

And in these words I found the answer to why people decided to remain when Kastellorizo was a shattered ruin of its former self. They chose this life at the edge of the Greek world, and they endured. And, like a phoenix, when this island rose from the ashes, it came out stronger. Any sense of vulnerability due to Kastellorizo’s geographical location belongs exclusively to passing travelers.

Special thanks to Constantina Agapitou Crowley, Vice President of the Worldwide Kastellorizian Association “O Aghios Konstantinos”and Vice President and Athens Rep of the Hellenic Lyceum Kastellorizo; to real estate agent Kostas Pavlidis; and to civil engineer Andreas Kostadellos, for the information they provided for this article. the settlement’s traditional character. Upgrading the infrastructure with relation to the water grid, waste management and recycling, and the sewage system, are the biggest challenges for the island right now,” she says, referring to an issue everyone agrees is a priority..

These are, indeed, important challenges and ones that will determine the

island’s tourism potential. Many express concern about the marine environment, the poor sanitation services outside the center of town, the fact that the island relies on an old-fashioned landfill and the stalled recycling program.

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BEYOND BORDERS How Kastellorizo acquired its own international documentary festival

BY GIORG O S T SI RO S & M A R I A C OV E OU PHOTOS: CH R I STOS SI M ATOS

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hen historian Irini Sarioglou, a true Istanbulite and a proud graduate of the Zappeion School for Girls, first visited Kastellorizo in 1991 on vacation – “with my parents, my brother, our dog and my guitar” – the island was a lot different than it is today. The ruins of the 20th century, which was so ruthless to the island for its most part, were everywhere. The glory days of a thriving society that was regarded as the mirror-image of Smyrna, with 10,000 residents and 3,000 students at the Santrape School, were nothing but a distant memory. Tourism was negligible and there were just three tavernas – “though the owners looked after their customers as though they were guests in their own home.” And not even the Oscar-winning film “Mediterraneo” had been made yet, to stir some interest in the far-flung island on Greece’s easternmost border.

The years went by and Sarioglou’s personal and professional bond with the island deepened as she experienced it in joy and sadness, and studied it in depth.

As general secretary of the Hellenic History Foundation (HHF), she has overseen publications, exhibitions, documentaries and the Beyond Borders International Documentary Festival of Kastellorizo.

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traveled beyond Greece’s borders.

“It all started five years ago. HHF had published the historical album ‘On the Edge of the Aegean: Castellorizo, 18901948,’ by Greek-Australians Nikos Papanastasiou and Nikos Vogiatzis, and released a documentary of the same name that we directed with Angelos Kovotsos, which actually went on to win the prize for most creative documentary at the 2016 International Film and Documentary Festival in London,” says Sarioglou.

“Having the film screened in Kastellorizo, an island with a vital role in the history of Hellenism, was much more than a desire – it was a duty. Along the way, we had the idea of not settling for a single screening, but to establish a festival that would help the island claim the place it deserves on the cultural map.”

With its rich and tumultuous history, Kastellorizo itself ultimately defined the character of the Beyond Borders festival, and the documentaries that are selected are mostly of a historical nature. “They may be about the history of a minority group, of an individual or of a war. They address seminal events and people who have had an influence on countries, people and cultures all over the world, always along the themes of history and society,” explains Sarioglou.

Every year, the selection committee must choose 24 films from 18 countries, “and believe me, the quality is so high

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01. Screening night at the town square.

02. Alexandros Melissinos’ shadow theater was a big hit with the young crowd.

03. The National Historical Museum brings its own special touch to the festival, offering workshops for children.

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04. Learning the art of puppet-making for shadow theater.

05. The official program of this year’s edition of the festival.

06. Maria Iliadis, a member of the organizing committee.

07. The Secretary General for Public Diplomacy and Greeks Abroad John Chrysoulakis (right) with the festival’s founder Irini Sarioglou and co-organizer Michel Fais.

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INFO

Beyond Borders is organized by the Hellenic History Foundation (www.idisme.gr), together with Ecrans des Mondes in Paris and the Society for the Restoration of Megisti Castellorizo in Sydney, Australia. It is held under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry’s General Secretariat for Greeks Abroad, the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Municipality of Megisti and the embassies of Australia, Israel and the United States, with the support of the Greek Parliament, the General Secretariat for the Aegean and Island Policy, the Culture Ministry’s General Secretariat for Overseas Greeks, the national broadcaster ERT and the National Center for Audiovisual Media and Communication. www.beyondborders.gr

Filippos Vardakas receives the first-ever Odysseus Special Award, courtesy of the General Secretariat of Greeks Abroad, for his film “The Silence of the Deep.”

that this is one committee I would honestly like to not be on,” says Sarioglou.

“Even this year, in the wake of the lockdown and the isolation, we had 304 entries from 50 countries. We must have been among the few festivals in Europe that did not just go ahead, but actually enriched their program. Apart from the awards for Best Historical and Best Sociopolitical documentaries, both backed by the Greek Parliament, and the Special Award for Mediterranean Friendship, sponsored by the National Center of Audiovisual Media and Communication, we also added an award for Best Short Documentary, another for Best Greek

Documentary – sponsored by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Greek Film Center – and the Odysseus Special Award, which is supported by the General Secretariat for Greeks Abroad and is awarded to a Greek filmmaker who is based overseas.”

The festival was warmly received from the very beginning and film buffs traveled from all over the world to the beautiful island, alongside important directors, historians and archaeologists. Even this past summer, when the pandemic and tensions with Turkey cast doubt over participations until the very last minute, the festival was carried out under the auspices of the embassies of the United States, Australia and Israel.

“We were particularly happy to welcome the ambassadors to our island.”

The response from the local commu-

“EVEN THIS YEAR, IN THE WAKE OF THE LOCKDOWN AND THE ISOLATION, WE HAD 304 ENTRIES FROM 18 COUNTRIES. WE MUST HAVE BEEN AMONG THE FEW FESTIVALS IN EUROPE THAT DID NOT JUST GO AHEAD, BUT ACTUALLY ENRICHED THEIR PROGRAM.” – IRINI SARIOGLOU

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nity – young and old alike – has been just as important. This has been helped by the program of parallel events, which is constantly being enriched with discussion panels, educational activities for the island’s children, concerts, photography and sculpture exhibitions, scuba diving lessons, shadow puppet theater, etc.

“We brought professional theater back to the island after an absence of 110 years,” says Sarioglou. Are there any particular moments that unfolded “behind the scenes” that were particularly moving on this journey? “I will always remember this local kid called Nikolis. It must have been toward the end of the festival’s third edition when he came up to me, excited to announce that he had decided what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to be a historian!

When I asked him why in surprise, he answered straightaway: ‘So I can organize documentary festivals!’”

Preparations for the next festival begin as soon as the previous one ends.

It is a 12-month process that takes an enormous amount of energy and dedication – but mostly love. “You can never achieve success without endless, boundless love for what you do! Our vision is for Kastellorizo to once more become an intellectual hub where the discipline of history will come together not just with documentary film but with other aspects of culture as well.”

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DIRECTORS’ CUTS

Beyond Borders through the eyes of three filmmakers who took part in its 2020 edition.

THODORIS CHONDROGIANNOS Special Award for Mediterranean Friendship, courtesy of the National Center of Audiovisual Media and Communication– EKOME, for “Silent Fish” (Greece, 2020, 70 mins), directed by Andreas Loukakos and Thodoris Chondrogiannos.

DIMITRIS KAFIDAS

Best Greek Documentary, courtesy of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, for “Spiros and the Circle of Death” (Greece-Belgium, 2020, 56 mins), directed by Dimitris Kafidas and Lino Kafidas.

I had never been to Kastellorizo, but nothing could have stopped me from going now, not even Turkish frigates! Our film “Spiros and the Circle of Death” was selected for the Beyond Borders International Documentary Festival and it was an opportunity you simply cannot pass up! If I had to describe the festival in a single word, it would be “charming.” It’s a warm, friendly and small festival, but also extremely well-organized with great parallel events and panels. It’s on track to becoming an important name on the festival circuit in a few years’ time. The island, meanwhile, is colorful, picturesque and so small that it takes just two days to get to know everyone by their first name. Kiko, the man who owns the taverna at Ai-Giorgis, pointed across the sea to Kas in Turkey and talked to us about how much he missed his Turkish friends.

Exclusive economic zones mean nothing in friendships and human relationships.

“Silent Fish” addresses overfishing in the Mediterranean and how it empties the sea of stocks and threatens the livelihoods of fishermen in the age of climate change. It was shot in fishing grounds in different countries around the Mediterranean, so its voyage to Kastellorizo is especially symbolic – to a fishing ground that also constitutes the edge of Greece but also of Europe. It was touching that – despite the pandemic – we were able to share our film’s screening in person with the people of this island, who ought to be remembered and honored with cultural events right here. I was also overjoyed by the film receiving the Mediterranean Friendship Award, as one of our objectives was to highlight the shared roots and common problems of the Mediterranean people who have more things uniting than dividing them. It is one of culture’s roles to remind us of such things in times like these.

YIANNIS KOLOZIS

Special Mention for “Yiorgos of Kedros” (Greece, 2020, 82 mins), directed by Yiannis Kolozis and Giorgos Kolozis.

It was almost dark as the ship sailed into Kastellorizo. The closer we got to the island, the nearer it seemed to the Turkish coast. Borders, after all, are a human invention and soon collapse in the face of the reality. All I saw was sea and land, and then light and people. People who are just like the people across the sea: at times confident, at others racked with insecurity. Just like the people I saw featured in the documentaries of the festival: from the Roma people of the Balkans to the Aborigines of Australia.

In the few days I spent on this faraway island, I was reminded of why I make documentaries, the process, embracing ignorance and going forward together.

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INSIGHT

THE BAREFOOT SCULPTOR Self-taught artist and likeable local character Alexandros Zigouris talks about his own Kastellorizo.

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hat fragrances fill the air on Kastellorizo?

Oregano is certainly one of them. Its aroma is present everywhere on the island. Sage is another; it’s ubiquitous. But above all, it’s the strong scent of history that dominates here. With every step, you’ll come across a grave, a ruined fortress, or an old round stone pit where they used to stomp grapes. All of these can be found up on the mountain, as this is where the island’s treasures are located.

It was walking across Kastellorizo that taught me history; it gave me the incentive to pick up the ancient classics.

I prefer to walk barefoot, because the roads are mainly made of cement, and it’s ridiculous to walk on cement in shoes.

Or on the pathways. The paths on Kastellorizo are ancient.

I first came to this island 41 years ago.

My family hails from Gorgomilos in Preveza, in Western Greece. My father traded in livestock and my mother never even went to school. When I was 16, I went to Athens, attended a technical school for machinists, worked in a factory, and be116

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came an active member of the workers’ union movement, but I became disillusioned with things and gave up that life. I started to travel – first, I went to Lesvos, then Kos, and finally, in 1979, I came to Kastellorizo.

About 250 people lived on the island then, most of them elderly, and they welcomed me like one of their own. The press at the time was emphasizing the problems the islands close to the Turkish mainland were facing with that country, but when I traveled to these places, I realized that life was going on as normal. An inhabitant of Kastellorizo lived like an Athenian, or like someone from Preveza; there was no fear.

Over the course of all these years, I’ve seen the island change a great deal. After 1991, when the film “Mediterraneo” was released, a lot of Italian tourists began to visit the island. Traditional coffee shops were transformed into café-bars, tourist accommodations were built, and there was a sense of prosperity. But this was followed by envy because, instead of focusing on their own customers, everyone was looking to see if their neighbor had more, or less, business than they did.

It was on Kastellorizo that I got in-

volved with sculpture. I am a self-taught sculptor, because I just couldn’t stay in school – I wanted to get out, into the sun. My works can be grouped into two types: the “mobile” (sculpted in marble) and the “immobile” (compositions on limestone surfaces).

Eight months a year, from April to November, I live on Kastellorizo and sleep in a tent. The fact that it doesn’t rain a lot is very convenient, but whatever the weather, you’re still on the ground. You might go to bed in the evening and wake up even more tired the next morning.

Still, I prefer to sleep in a tent than in my workshop, as that would change the entire atmosphere of my workspace. I was fortunate to have been given the old petrol warehouse at the entrance of the port; it was a gift from the municipality. This is where my workshop is housed, open to all, locals and visitors. When I think about that space now, I picture it steeped in melancholy, shuttered and dark. This year, because of COVID-19, I didn’t go to Kastellorizo at all, and I’ve missed my workshop more than anything else. − AS TOLD TO ELEFTHERIA ALAVANOU

kastellorizo

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THE KAZZIES

Proud inheritors of a cultural legacy that they’ve maintained across time and distance, the Kastellorizian communities in Australia are never far from the island in their thoughts. In large part, they credit their successful contributions to the Australian nation to values that their forebears learned on the “Rock.”

Above: The Wedding of Dimitrios Stavrianos and Katina Atzemi, at Aghia Triadha Church (the first Greek Orthodox church founded in Australia), Sydney, 1936.

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PIONEERS

FROM MIGRANTS TO TRANSNATIONAL CITIZENS The (re)creation of Kastellorizian identity in Perth, Australia.

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PIONEERS

Migration from Kastellorizo, 1938.

Bidding farewell to those who are leaving on the “Fiume.”

their cultural identity over the past hundred years or so.

My academic relationship with Kastellorizo began long ago, in the mid-1980s, when I started my doctorate on the Kastellorizian community of Perth, and has continued unabated with visits to the island and to Australia and, of course, with constant communication with Kastellorizians at home and abroad. Besides Perth, there are Kastellorizian communities in other Australian cities, such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Darwin. (Each of these has its own, clear personality, but it’s the personality of the Kazzie – “Kazzie” is what Kastellorizians call themselves in Australia – community of Perth that I want to talk about here, since they are the ones my research brought me closest to). The Kazzies of Australia have a very strong sense of themselves as Kastellorizians, rather than just Greeks. However, they also consider themselves quintessential Greeks and quintessential Australians.

There are many reasons that lead them to look at themselves like this, including historical, geopolitical, economic and socio-cultural factors at play.

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ustralia will always be my birthplace, but Kastellorizo will always be my home,” Maraya Takoniatis, a student whose ancestors had emigrated to Perth, Australia, in the early 1900s, wrote in the newsletter “Filia” in 2015, after she’d spent some time on the island as part of a student exchange organized by the association “Friends of Kastellorizo.”

For years, the subject of my research has been the Kastellorizians of Australia. For me, Maraya’s phrase sums up how Australia’s Kastellorizians have managed to simultaneously maintain and transform

LEAVING HOME The inhabitants of Kastellorizo had always relied on trade and other maritime occupations, such as fishing and sponge-diving. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Kastellorizian trader-captains and merchants transported and traded goods all across the Mediterranean and far into the Black Sea. The island prospered and established trading colonies on the shores of Asia Minor. The result of all this was a socio-economically stratified society, in which the upper orders possessed power and wealth in the form of houses, clothes and jewelry that reflected a cosmopolitan lifestyle.

Most Kastellorizians emigrated to Australia during the first three decades of the 20th century, in response to the political and economic problems they faced at

the time. Restrictions were growing on the autonomy that the Kastellorizians had been granted by the Ottomans and taxes were increased towards the end of the 19th century. The islanders were also unable to compete with steam ships, and industrially produced substitutes led to the decline of the sponge trade, in which the Kastellorizians were heavily involved.

All this affected the island’s economy, as did the rise of nationalism in Turkey from 1908 onwards, a rise that was part of the birth of nation-states everywhere.

In 1913, a revolution took place on Kastellorizo, aimed at uniting the island with Greece; this led to instability and shut off access to Ottoman markets. Thereafter, the history of Kastellorizo is a litany of disasters.

DURING THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES, KASTELLORIZIAN TRADER-CAPTAINS AND MERCHANTS TRANSPORTED AND TRADED GOODS ALL ACROSS THE MEDITERRANEAN AND FAR INTO THE BLACK SEA.

The island was occupied by the French from 1915 to 1921, and was calamitously involved in WWI. Between 1910 and 1917 its population dropped by 77%, that is, by 7,000 individuals. The Italians then occupied Kastellorizo from 1921 to 1943, imposing a strict policy of Italianization after 1933. Such was the flight from the island, that from 1936 to 1941 there were only 1,100 inhabitants left on Kastellorizo, as the migrants sailed off to join their relatives and friends in Perth and elsewhere. During my fieldwork, I talked to Kastellorizians who recalled the melancholy spectacle of emigrant ships leaving K A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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Kastellorizo harbor, sent off with songs sung by the womenfolk of the island on the subject of emigration and departure.

During WWII, Kastellorizo suffered terribly. Used as a base by the British, it was bombed and looted. Its inhabitants were moved, first to Cyprus and then to camps in Palestine, until the end of the war. A group of 500 Kastellorizians who’d been in the camps set sail from Port Said in 1945 on the “Empire Patrol” to return to their island. The ship caught fire several miles off Port Said and 33 Kastellorizians perished. Many of the survivors ultimately emigrated to Australia, where they committed their testimonies on their experiences to a digital “site of memory”

(www.empirepatrol.com), whose aim is to preserve this material for all Kastellorizians and the general public.

Settling in Australia was easy between 1933 and 1939. All one needed was a deposit of £50 and a relative or friend who could guarantee employment and accommodation. New arrivals provided already-established Kastellorizians with a source of cheap labor, while they themselves benefited from settling close to each other and to the church and community hall, located in the near-central area of Northbridge, where they lived between the 1930s and 1960s. Over time, the bonds between members of the Kazzie community grew even strong-

AVGOUSTIS’ STORY FORMS PART OF THE COLLECTIVE KAZZIE MYTH, AS IT DISPLAYS ALL THE VALUES, PRACTICES AND SYMBOLS THAT MAKE UP THE KAZZIES’ “CHARTER OF BEING.

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er, as they lived and worked side by side. Living and socializing in the same, close-knit area naturally gave the firstand second-generation Kazzies a very strong collective identity.

THE CHARTER OF BEING The pioneer who led the chain of migration from Kastellorizo to Perth was Athanasios Avgoustis, or Arthur Auguste, the “safer” anglicized version he chose for himself in Australia. Avgoustis left Kastellorizo when it was still under Turkish rule; in fact, he gave pursuing Turkish authorities the slip as he fled. After traveling to Egypt, he was employed for a time on the Suez Canal, and also held a number of other jobs before journeying to Australia. In Broome, on the north coast of Western Australia, he worked in the pearl industry. In Adelaide, in South Australia, and in Fremantle, in Western Australia, he cultivated oysters and served them in restaurants he opened there. This career led later immigrants from Kastellorizo to engage in the fishing and fish restaurant industries. Avgoustis settled in Perth in the mid-1890s and became a leading fig-

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ure for the Kazzie community, blazing a trail for Kastellorizians (and other Greeks) and showing them how to make a go of settling in a new country.

Avgoustis’ story forms part of the collective Kazzie myth, as it displays all the values, practices and symbols that make up the Kazzies’ view of themselves, or what anthropologists call their “charter of being.” Greeks of the diaspora will always tell you about the “Greek aptitude for commerce” or the “Greek talent for business.”

Unsurprisingly, the Kazzies will tell you this even more forcefully when they talk about the Kazzie community, using the epic of Arthur Auguste to make their point.

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY Avgoustis’ life story includes more elements of “authentic” Kastellorizian-ness.

In 1903, he made the journey from Perth to Egypt to marry a Kastellorizian woman, who returned with him to Australia and gave him a large family. At that time, Kastellorizians preferred to marry their own, and this they were able to do when Kastellorizian families, including girls and young women, started arriving in Perth in

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01. Embracing modernity: Athanasios Avgoustis and his family proudly displaying their new automobile in Perth in 1915 outside Avgoustis’ oyster saloon.

02. The emblem of Kastellorizo (a heart, an anchor and a cross) with photos of the Inaugural Committee of the Castellorizian Association of Western Australia.

the 1910s. Some early Kastellorizian migrants did, however, marry Anglo-Australian women, and this turned out well, as it raised their public profile in the assimilationist society of the time and helped them negotiate the thickets of Australian bureaucracy. One such migrant was Peter Michelides, a Kastellorizian from Egypt, who introduced tobacco cultivation to Western Australia, building a tobacco factory in Perth in the 1930s. As time went by, more and more Kastellorizians married “out,” finding either non-Kastellorizian Greeks or non-Greeks. As late as the mid-1980s, though, in all their marriages the Kastellorizians determinedly asserted who they were, symbolically and collectively, by performing Kastellorizian wedding rituals and singing Kastellorizian

03. The grave of Avgoustis and his wife in the Greek Orthodox sector of Karakatta Cemetery, Perth.

The inscription reads “Greek brothers, hold fast to Greek customs.”

04. A Kastellorizian Ball, held in Sydney in 1925.

wedding songs. Now that there are fewer and fewer people left who are able to sing these songs in the traditional fashion, the rituals are handled differently, but they remain important, because they still express the strong bonds of family and community among the Kastellorizians.

The story of Avgoustis is important in other ways for the narrative that Kazzies tell of themselves. Kazzies have always engaged in Greek community politics and have provided political leaders.

While I did my fieldwork, I was often proudly told that the Kastellorizians had willingly placed their money and energies at the disposal of the entire Greek community, first and foremost as Greeks and secondarily as Kastellorizians. Avgoustis and other pioneers set up the CastellorK A S T E L LO R I ZO 2 0 2 0

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THE KAZZIES HAD SOCIALIZED TOGETHER, HOLDING FAST TO THEIR VALUES AND CUSTOMS IN A TIGHTKNIT COMMUNITY OVER THE DECADES, DESPITE THE INEVITABLE TRANSFORMATIONS WROUGHT BY TIME AND BY LIVING IN AUSTRALIA.

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izian Association of Western Australia in 1912, creating the first ethno-regional association in Australia. Acting on behalf of the entire Greek community, this association bought the land on which the Greek Orthodox Church of Saints Constantine and Helen, the patron saints of Kastellorizo, would be built in 1936.

The arrival in Perth of the last wave of Kastellorizian migrants after WWII added another dimension to the Kazzie narrative, stressing the resilience of those who had emerged from war and refugee camps and shipwreck. This epic of survival and dynamism was later publicized in the Australian mass media, thus becoming part of Australian public history.

For decades to come, the leadership of the Greek community would be firmly in the hands of Kastellorizian businessmen and professionals. While this confirmed the Kazzies’ belief in their collective superiority and uniqueness, not surprisingly it tended to irritate members of the non-Kastellorizian Greek community, who came from areas such as Greek Macedonia, Crete, the Peloponnese and Lesvos.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, large numbers of Greeks had emigrated to Australia, in response to its open immigration policy, and this had its effects on

Kazzie primacy and influence in Perth.

New associations were founded and a second Greek Orthodox church was established, to accommodate the new immigrants’ needs for participation and power. At the same time, state ideology shifted from Anglo-oriented assimilationism to multiculturalism, which regarded ethnic cultures as valuable capital, to be cherished and handed down the generations. This all increased the collective power and self-confidence of Greek immigrants who came to Australia after the 1950s. Official Australian society now valued the Greek language and Greek cultural skills in education and communication, which led to the new immigrants acquiring power in community structures and organizations and, inevitably, to the erosion of positions held by second- and third-generation Kazzies.

Nevertheless, successful Australian-born middle-class businessmen and professionals making up the Kastellorizian elite were and are still promoted as exemplars of core Kazzie values and practices, that is, professional and economic success on the part of the men, commitment to the family, home and the upbringing of children on the part of women and involvement on the part of all in the

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01. Open for business: brothers Theodosios, Konstandinos and Evangelos Penglis in their newly-opened café in Halifax, North Queensland, 1917.

02. Hard work and revelry: Greeks from Kastellorizo and Florina relax after a day’s hard work in Innisfail, North Queensland.

community, in charities and above all, in the Church. When second-generation Kastellorizian civil engineer and academic Ken Michael became Governor of Western Australia (2006-2011), the prestige of this group naturally increased, as did the collective symbolic capital that this group enjoyed in Australia and overseas.

TODAY By the mid-80s, most Kastellorizians were using the narratives from much older relatives and, of course, their own imagination to link themselves to their ancestral island. The Kazzies had socialized together, holding fast to their values and customs in a tight-knit community over the decades, despite the inevitable transformations wrought by time and by living in Australia. The members of the second and third generations were, therefore, deeply attached to their image of their

homeland, and the values that Kastellorizian immigrants and their descendants had maintained in Australia made them want to “give back,” as the motto of the “Friends of Kastellorizo,” an association created by Australian-born Kazzies, has it, “to the island of [their] forebears.” And so Australian-born Kastellorizians began to return to Kastellorizo, in the hope of putting down roots in a place where many no longer had any living relatives.

One of the unforeseen consequences was litigation between the Australians and those islanders who had taken over abandoned homes on the island.

However, good things also ensued, with improvements to the infrastructure and the reconstruction of houses, with all the economic benefits this brought.

This was when second- and third-generation Australian Kastellorizians took to celebrating their weddings on the island, bringing over friends and family, holding traditional rituals and strengthening the bonds with the ancestral land, in a deeply emotional communion with the Kastellorizians of the past. Above all, they took it upon themselves to familiarize their own children and grandchildren with the culture and environment of the island. This involved such things as long and expen-

sive trips to Kastellorizo and yearly student exchanges, an experience that left a deep impression on anyone who took part. The young islanders who visited Australia through this program benefited just as much, increasing their knowledge of, and empathy for, their “compatriot others” who live Down Under.

The development of such mutual understanding has led to joint projects, including efforts regarding the protection of the island’s natural environment, which is felt to belong to resident and diaspora Kastellorizians alike. Thus, Kastellorizo now flourishes in both hemispheres, the result of the strong bonds between the two communities, diaspora and resident, providing a good example of the way in which people in today’s globalized world construct enduring transnational identities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VASSILIKI CHRYSSANTHOPOULOU has a doctorate in Social Anthropology from Oxford University and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her book, Sites of Memory in Castellorizian Migration and Diaspora (in Greek; Papazissis Publications, Athens 2017) won the Moskovis Dodecanesian Prize of the Municipality of Athens in 2018.

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ANDREW LIVERIS

The island in his heart

Often described as a “global power player,” the former CEO of Dow Chemical and founder of The Hellenic Initiative describes how the Kastellorizian spirit shaped his character and offers suggestions for a better future for the island.

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ndrew Liveris had first planned to go to Kastellorizo in May. When that proved impossible, he rescheduled his trip for September, but, in the end, the COVID-19 pandemic thwarted his plans.

The cherished pleasure of reconnecting with the birthplace of his ancestors has now been postponed until 2021. But no matter where he finds himself, for Liveris, founder of The Hellenic Initiative and CEO of the multinational conglomerate Dow Chemical from 2004 to 2018, the “Rock,” as the island is affectionately called, is always in his heart and in his thoughts. And that’s why, when I contacted him to request a chance to talk to him about Kastellorizo, he agreed at once.

A telephone interview was scheduled – early morning for me, early afternoon for him in Sydney. I dialed his number and listened as a dynamic voice, which instantly inspired respect and yet at the same time seemed both friendly and familiar, answered from afar.

Like his forebears, Liveris, now 66, had worked hard to earn a living. A child born into poverty and bereft of his father from the age of 14, he found a father figure in his uncle Lazarus, who pushed him to study and to dream big. Following a somewhat impulsive decision to major in Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland, Liveris excelled at his studies and landed his first job at Dow Chemical, where he climbed the ladder, rung by rung, to the very top.

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it should be added that he sits on the boards of a number of multinationals, has been called on to advise each of the last three presidents of the USA (Clinton, Obama and Trump), the government of Australia and the $250 billion Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), and that his work has seen him establish professional relationships with some of the most powerful people in the world. A father of three and a devoted husband to his wife Paula for nearly 40 years now, Andrew Liveris is a man who appreciates life’s simple joys far more than the pomp and pageantry his position has so often required him to endure.

Mr Liveris, in recent months we’ve seen tensions rise in Eastern Mediterranean. Were you concerned about Kastellorizo?

The geopolitics of Kastellorizo are centuries old. The island, of course, has always been ethnically Greek, even back in ancient times. To have people act aggressively and possibly threaten Greek sovereignty is not something new, but the difference is that the island doesn’t have so many people living on it now. Most of us who come have roots there through our parents and grandparents, and look at the island with great fondness – it’s our legacy, and many of us have second homes there. So yes, I am concerned, because the island is lawfully Greek and it will always be; that’s how it is. And I don’t like aggression, either. I am a fan

“I’M A PRODUCT OF IMMIGRANTS, OF COURAGEOUS BUT IMPOVERISHED PEOPLE. I BELIEVE WHERE WE COME FROM IS, IN A SENSE, WHO WE ARE AND WHERE WE ARE GOING. YOU PREPARE YOUR FUTURE BY USING THE MEMORIES AND THE LESSONS FROM YOUR PAST.”

Liveris believes that now is the time to invest in basic infrastracture on Kastellorizo, and set the foundations for its future development.

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of always doing things diplomatically, although sometimes a lot of noise has to be made before diplomacy can work. That being said, Greece and the EU must never succumb to bullying and bellicose tactics.

The actions and behaviors of power-hungry autocrats must be neutralized with firmness. Kastellorizo is, and will always be, Greek.

Why is it important to stay connected with our roots?

I’m a product of immigrants, of courageous but impoverished people. I believe where we come from is, in a sense, who we are and where we are going. I think you prepare your future by using the memories and the lessons from your past. Your history shapes you. We are, after all, creatures of our environment and the legacy we’ve been given is most definitely a large part of our environment, so we have to care about that. A big piece of that is caring about the traditions and the cultural heritage that shaped you into who you are.

Do you think this idea of heritage, is something rare in today’s globalized world?

In my many decades of work on an international level in the worlds of business, finance, and politics, I’ve found that being a global citizen, is actually the exception to the rule. People are very local, very village-based. We are very tribal, and our communities are important to us, because they connect us to our history and our roots and define who we are as people. Therefore, we find globalism through our people. If you can operate globally by connecting communities, connecting people, this actually is the best goal of globalism. That’s what I do.

My family arrived from one part of the

world, Greece and Kastellorizo, I grew up in another part of the world, Australia, and lived in America and Asia, so I’m at ease with all types of people and I’m comfortable with all types of culture. Unfortunately, however, I’m in the minority.

There are many more people who didn’t have this opportunity or don’t even think this way. They get stuck in the local way of doing things. It’s up to people like me to help those people understand that, just because someone looks, acts, and even eats differently, it doesn’t mean they are worse than you. That understanding, that willingness to create a connectivity, is, unfortunately, not common, and this is what gets the world into trouble.

What defines the Kastellorizian spirit and how has it helped shape your personality?

Kastellorizo was a place I’d never visited until I was well into my twenties, but there were two things that I’d heard of and then saw for myself when I finally did visit, things that made it a place I’m proud to call my ancestral home. The first is that, like many other Greek islands, it’s small, and it doesn’t have many resources. The people on the island had to be enterprising, had to find ways to make a life somewhere that, in nearly every respect, is uninhabitable, whether we’re talking fishing or basic farming or even commerce and mercantile trading. Its seeming inability to sustain life makes you appreciate the life that’s there. The second thing, however, is unique to Kastellorizo. The island has always been the first and last place in terms of travel in and out of Greece, or, for that matter, in and out of the EU. It’s a crossroads. In the ancient times, and even as recently as when the French and Italians occupied it, it was a gateway to the Levant, to another world: the Arab

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01. The Liveris family, circa 1950. From left: Lazarus, George, Maria (Andrew’s grandmother) and Nicholas (Andrew’s father).

02. Andrew with his cousin Nick Mitaros on Kastellorizo in 2014.

03. With his wife Paula on the island in 2013.

04. Nicholas Liveris (Andrew’s father), his brother George, two cousins and brother Lazarus in front of the original family home on the Esplanade in Darwin, Australia, 1928.

05. Andrew on Kastellorizo with Kyriakos Karayiannis, in 2010.

06. Andrew and his wife Paula and children Anthony, Alexandra and Nicholas, in 2014, on Kastellorizo.

world. Not unlike Constantinople, it was a meeting point of continents. And Kastellorizo, despite its small size, loomed large; it had an impact on that part of the world.

There’s an expression we use in Australia: “It punches above its weight.” And I think that bravado, that strength of character and almost egotistical demeanor makes Kastellorizo and Kastellorizians special. It means we can take on anything.

Do you remember your first visit?

Of course. I had goosebumps, and even as I talk about it now, I still get tingles.

Nothing prepares you for the beauty of the harbor, the colorful houses and the ruins of the old fort on top of the hill, or climbing the steps at the back of the hill, or the town itself and the walk along the seafront where the restaurants are. I remember coming on a little fishing boat from Turkey with my new bride, my wife for 37 years now, as we headed to the island on our very first trip. We were touring Europe on our honeymoon, and on Kastellorizo we were greeted by my uncle and my aunt, Archie and Marian Mitaros.

They showed us around and Archie took us to the old monastery on the top of the mountain. Their relationship to the island impressed me. I was also impressed by the locals with their friendliness and their helpfulness. This was before I became well known, before anyone knew who I was, and nobody had to treat me special, but they did. Just like a long-lost son.

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The Kastellorizian diaspora of Australia is unique, in the sense that it’s so closely knit, and so connected to the island.

In Australia, there are many diaspora groups from Greek islands – Kalymnians, Kytherans, Rhodians, Cretans and more. But Kastellorizians take it to another level. We have been given DNA from our forebears that is, of course, Greek, but that’s uniquely Kastellorizian as well.

We’re fighters, we’re survivors, hard workers, we’re loyal, we’re respectful and we get things done, and these are attributes that are treasured in the Western world.

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of the Greeks is that we don’t work well together, and maybe there’s some truth to that, but Kastellorizians do work well together.

On the one hand, we have a romantic-heroic narrative regarding Kastellorizo, and on the other, there are the facts as they are: incomes and even groceries come mostly from Turkey, there are problems finding even basic medicines, poor educational resources, and the island is 100% dependent on seasonal tourism. What can be done to change this?

The century since the dissolution of the

Ottoman Empire and the earthquake of 1926 has been witness to the depopulation and degradation of Kastellorizo. I think the most important step is to stabilize first, and then grow as a result. Unfortunately, the population is too small; the schools on the island are not very good; people have to send their kids to Rhodes for further education of any quality; and there is little in the way of medical support on the island. If you come down with something serious, you have to leave the island for treatment. The one good thing that the island does have, thanks to the Greek ferry system, is transport; you can get on and off it, although not very easily. In general, however, the is-

INTERVIEW

Andrew Liveris in a Dow Chemical facility in 2014. He stayed with the company for 40 years and served as its CEO from 2004 to 2018.

philanthropy behind this, but it has to be coupled with a very strong statement from the Greek government that Kastellorizo matters. It’s not just about holding state visits or making a show of solidarity, it’s stating this is our border, the border of our country, and that Greece is going to help it with its infrastructure, make it a part of the Greece that we all know, and help it get the kind of effective tourism that won’t harm it. And this two-pronged approach, attention from the government and attention from individuals from the diaspora, will not only help stop people from leaving the island, but should make them start coming back. We can do that and, frankly, we can do it in cooperation with our Turkish neighbors. The relationship with Kaş is very strong. But we have to give it the priority I just talked about.

some windmills to harness wind power, all infrastructure investment to stimulate the economy.

Last but not least... Tell me about your favorite summer rituals when on Kastellorizo. How do you spend your days?

On Kastellorizo, I just want to slow down, because I’m in a hurry everywhere else.

Here it’s about taking it slowly, enjoying a swim, and meeting up with others for a coffee, an ouzo or a meal. A walk to the grocery store and a conversation with the owner, seeing friends that I haven’t seen for a while, going out on hikes with my wife: that’s what I want to do. One of our favorite things is to wake up early in the morning, go down to our friends who own one of the restaurants, either Irini at Little Paris, or Barbara at Barbara’s Cafe, and either Irini’s father Giorgio or Barbara’s husband Kyriakos will take us on their little boat to the islet of Aghios Georgios.

There, we’ll have a swim in the beautiful

“KASTELLORIZO, DESPITE ITS SMALL SIZE, LOOMED LARGE; IT HAD AN IMPACT ON THAT PART OF THE WORLD. THERE’S AN EXPRESSION WE USE IN AUSTRALIA: ‘IT PUNCHES ABOVE ITS WEIGHT.’” land lacks basic infrastructures and basic services. To improve things, the welfare of the island has to be made a national priority. The two things that have to be done, and from my end I’m certainly very willing to help make them happen, are that the Kastellorizian diaspora has to know that they can be part of the solution, while the people on the island need to understand that it’s not a takeover; it’s your cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters from a long way away, and they’re here to help you. And it’s not just about writing checks, it’s actually about helping to build more effective systems – the hospital, the airport, and wastewater treatment facilities. There has to be

If you were to advise the Greek government on how to help Kastellorizo, where would you start?

In a time of crisis, when the economic depression is so severe that it doesn’t look like the economy will bounce back in a hurry, you have to borrow money in order to spend money on public infrastructure works. You have to create an investment stimulus. It’s the right time to fix the port, to fix the airport and the reservoir. I’d allocate the money from the national treasury, get EU funds for green infrastructure, and put up a green power plant on the island using solar. I’d get rid of the diesel-fired power stations, make the island carbon-friendly, and put

clear water and then a nice relaxing little breakfast, complete with Greek coffee in the small kafeneio on the island owned by Tsikos and his lovely Turkish wife. Before noon, we’re back on the boat and headed to our house to sit on the veranda, read a book, enjoy the breeze, and watch the goats who wander in from the backyard and try to eat our garden plants. It’s a nice easy way to get reacquainted with an environment that’s so welcoming.

I bet you’re obliged to have a meal in every taverna, so no one complains!

Of course. I’m too well known on the island to slip by unnoticed, so I have to make sure I don’t upset anyone!

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ontrary to what is commonly believed, Kastellorizo’s economic and social decline did not begin and end with the island’s cruel devastation during the Second World War. This heartbreaking final chapter, which included fierce German bombardment, was in fact more in the nature of a coup de grâce for a proudly Greek island that had already withstood economic calamity from as early as the last two decades of the 19th century.

Kastellorizo’s story is an extraordinary one precisely because it does not fit neatly within the traditional Dodecanese island narrative – and yet it remains a quintessentially Greek story. A potent combination of local Hellenic zeal, tightening Ottoman rule, strategic worth coupled with cultural isolation and various accidents of history produced a series of events peculiar to the island. These

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

–T. S. Eliot B Y N I C H O L A S PA P PA S

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Nikos Gounaris, one of the first Greek artists to tour Australia, performing at the Sydney Town Hall, 1957 in front of an audience of Kazzies and other Greek-Australians.

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included the creation of unbridled wealth in the middle years of the 19th century, a local revolt against the Turks in 1913, a short period of frenzied de facto Greek rule, and then successive French, Italian and British occupation, until Kastellorizo’s long-awaited and triumphant de jure union with Greece in 1948.

This cascade of events, punctuated by cruel bombardments in both wars and a devastating earthquake in 1926, were to produce wave upon wave of emigration from the island from as early as the 1880s up until the aftermath of the Second World War. The first brave adventurers departing the island were, typically, young males seeking new opportunities in territories as diverse as France, the Belgian Congo, Brazil, the East Coast and southern states of America, and, in greatest numbers, Australia. And gradually, as more and more relocated over time, the epicenter of the Kastellorizian “experience” shifted from the island itself to a distant, far larger island continent to which the island’s memorial and material 132

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THE PASSION OF THE “KAZZIES” FOR A ROMANTICIZED “RETURN” TO THEIR ISLAND GAINED TRACTION, LONG AFTER THEIR RELATIVELY SEAMLESS INTEGRATION INTO BROADER AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY.

heritage was progressively transplanted.

Today, it is estimated that over 80,000 Australians claim some familial link to Kastellorizo, an island that, at its zenith, supported a population of no more than 10,000. And while smaller Kastellorizian communities flourished for many decades in places like New York and Florianopolis, Brazil, there is little doubt that, today, the island’s heart beats loudest in Australian cities like Perth, Darwin, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.

In these multicultural urban centers, Kastellorizian family names like Paspaley,

Kailis, Liveris, Michael, Harmanis, Zempilas, Mangos and Bolkus are not only synonymous with success, but they’re deeply embedded into the modern Australian mosaic, too. And connecting them all is a nostalgic – some might say tenacious – attachment to a 10-square kilometer limestone rock in the eastern Mediterranean that has produced a diaspora community whose yearning for their legacy is all-pervasive.

Adorning their living rooms one will commonly find the ubiquitous black and white letterbox-cropped image of Kastel-

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Dr Ken Michael, who served as the 30th Governor of Western Australia from 2006 to 2011, awarding Australian citizenship at a ceremony held in 2018.

of Evangelismos in Melbourne in 1899).

Needless to say, such initiatives were vital to the maintenance of cultural and religious identity in a new land.

But to their fellow Greeks, the Kastellorizians (or “Kazzies” as they came to be known) seemed to project an unfamiliar sense of “otherness.” Occasionally surprised by the Kazzies’ eastern brand of “Greekness” (a quality they shared with many other Asia Minor Greeks), some Greeks could not handle the paradox of labeling a fellow Greek from another place as a xenos (foreigner). This, and other peculiarities, led to some occasional tensions, but over time such differences dissolved and new non-regional associations were formed to cater to a broader pan-Hellenic audience.

And still, the passion of the Kazzies for a romanticized “return” to their island gained traction, long after their relatively seamless integration into broader Australian society. The more time that passed, the greater was the expectation.

Indeed, the more “Australianized” the

Kazzies seemed to become, the stronger was their yearning for the rediscovery of their “lost” island. Encouraged by Australia’s policies promoting multiculturalism, the children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of early pioneers started making their own “pilgrimages” to see for themselves where it had all begun. Long-abandoned properties were reclaimed, neoclassical homes were slowly restored and Greek identity was proudly rediscovered. Genealogical trees stretching back to the 19th century were painstakingly researched and assembled, while old photographs were retrieved from kaseles (chests), reframed and displayed again.

All of this coincided, of course, with a renaissance of sorts on the island itself, when the azure waters of the easternmost Greek islands became the latest unexplored paradise for itinerant yachtsmen and tourists. On Kastellorizo, new restaurants opened, cafés and bars traded noisily, and the prokimea (waterfront), where over a century earlier merchants and sea

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LEFT: Keeping old memories alive in the Castellorizian Club, circa 1988. From left, Vania Pitsikas, Jack Barbouttis, Stan Nicholls, Nick Malaxos and John Lynch.

lorizo’s harbor crammed to capacity with two and three-masted brigs and barks.

The fact that the photograph dates from the last decade of the 19th century, three or even four generations back in time, does not lessen the image’s force. This is what Kastellorizo represents for these proud diaspora Greeks, even if such prosperity was already but a memory a century ago. Nevertheless, gazing at the image will routinely evoke treasured memories of a grandfather’s maritime tales or a grandmother’s delicate embroidery or ornate bridal costume.

Aside from its indigenous past, Australia was, to a large degree, a blank canvas for the early Greek migrants who arrived not only from Kastellorizo but also from Ithaki, Florina and Kythera. This enabled them to speedily make their mark in their chosen destination. Associations were formed and churches were built (the oldest Greek Orthodox church in Australia is that of Aghia Triadha, or the Holy Trinity, in Sydney, which was consecrated in 1898, just prior to the consecration

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© AUSTRALIAN FRIENDS OF KASTELLORIZO, 2008

VOICES FROM AUSTRALIA Distinguished members of the Kastellorizian diaspora describe how their roots have defined them.

Kastellorizian students on an exchange trip to Sydney with their Kazzie hosts (Australian Friends of Kastellorizo, 2008).

captains had walked, became instead a place for sunbathers and revelers. But in the island’s narrow lanes, more private moments of exploration began, as old neighborhoods were rediscovered and oft-told reminiscences at last made sense within their proper context.

Today, one could argue that the Kastellorizian diaspora in Australia is as vibrant as it ever has been, fueled as it is in large part by the vacation experiences of these descendants’ regular sojourns on the island. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the earlier years, when afternoons in clubhouses in Sydney or Perth, surrounded by colorized photographs of a devastated island landscape provided a much-needed connection to the island.

But today, clubs and brotherhoods are being reimagined and are slowly but surely redirecting their energies towards valuable cultural efforts that seek to pre-

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

serve and propagate the legacy that their ancestors transported to a new homeland clear across the globe. And diaspora links to Kastellorizo are being reinforced by charitable organizations like “Friends of Kastellorizo” which refocuses expatriate attention and assistance on the essential needs of the island.

The quotation from T. S. Eliot which opened this piece could not be more appropriate. The diaspora experience of the Greeks of Kastellorizo will only be truly complete when their journey has come full circle for their descendants. It is of lasting credit to our forebears that they undertook that journey in the first place, but it remains our, and our children’s, challenge to complete that circle of exploration and come to “know” our island – and, thereby, Greece – for the first time.

NICHOLAS PAPPAS hails from Kastellorizo on both sides of his family. He is a Sydney lawyer and company director in both the public and private spheres. He is the chairman of the Bank of Sydney and of Australia’s oldest and most successful rugby league club, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. He is also President of The Hellenic Initiative Australia, which assists Greek NGOs in their activities across Greece, and a board member of Sydney’s Hellenic Club and Melbourne’s Hellenic Museum.

Nicholas is the author of four books and numerous articles on Kastellorizo which have been published in both the English and Greek languages. His doctoral thesis focused on Kastellorizo’s years of French occupation (1915-1921).

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NICK PASPALEY

Head of the Paspaley Group (Darwin) “I THINK OF KASTELLORIZO AS MY PATRIARCH” My father passed away in 1984. He was very close and dear to me, and I am conscious that I exist because of him. My father existed because of Kastellorizo, so in a real sense I view Kastellorizo and my father as being the same thing. In this way, when I think of my father, I also think of Kastellorizo as my patriarch.

As I’ve grown older, I have come to recognize my father’s traits in me.

Interestingly, even those traits that are distinctly my own, I often consider how they differ from, or were influenced by, my father. In other words, I believe my roots are distinctly Kastellorizian.

I have very close friends in Australia who, coincidentally, also have roots in Kastellorizo. It’s interesting how successful those friends have become, just as my father was successful in his life.

If asked how I identify myself: I simply consider myself as a Kastellorizian who is an Australian citizen.

Nicholas Paspaley Sr. with his sister Mary circa 1937. He was only 19 years old when he bought his very first pearling lugger.

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DR JOHN YIANNAKIS, OAM Well-known historian and academic (Perth)

KERRY HARMANIS

Mining magnate (Darwin)

“THESE ARE MY ROOTS” My great-grandfather Manolis Margaritis lived with his family on Kastellorizo from at least 1860. My grandfather and father were born there, and my mother’s father was born there, too, the family coming originally from near Smyrna (Izmir).

So these are my roots.

Being of Kastellorizian roots I have business, commerce and the sea in my blood, along with a strong and dynamic personality; I’m sometimes excitable, I love life, I laugh a lot and I work hard.

The Kazzie community in Australia has done very well in commerce, academia, business, leadership – anywhere politics and argument exist, or else we aren’t Greeks!

The community comes together to promote and support their Greek heritage

and their island home of Kastellorizo.

A lot of money flows from Australia and the other Kastellorizian diasporas to the island. They have built houses and restored the island to the extent that it’s a very comfortable place now.

Kazzies are usually very family-focused, and follow all the Greek Orthodox traditions for Easter, weddings, christenings and other church events, as well as other traditions as we celebrate our Greek heritage.

Although we’re all busy in our own worlds, we still get together and are still close friends, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.

It is a strong heritage we have, all leading back to our Greek island home of Kastellorizo.

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“A CENTRAL ASPECT OF MY BEING” As a youngster in Western Australia I was aware of its Greek world, though not appreciative of it or the Kastellorizian presence within it. This awareness came in my mid-teen years. Yet it is this duality, which as a youngster troubled me, that makes being a Kazzie in Perth special: the ability to traverse the Greek and AngloAustralian worlds.

The importance placed on family, religion and the value of education helped shape me. Earlier generations, with their attempts at cultural, linguistic and religious maintenance in an environment that was often hostile, have allowed for a degree of cultural perseverance.

Certainly, growing up in pre-multicultural Australia had its challenges. Yet, I knew there was something special and worthwhile about my Greek background, although at times as a teenager I tried to downplay it.

I came to realize that Greeks in this state, and Kastellorizians in particular, have made an extraordinary contribution at every level and in every sphere. From laborers to lawyers; academics to artists; entrepreneurs to sportspersons. In fact, the only non Anglo-Celt Governor of Western Australia has been a Kastellorizian. Despite their parochialism, there is a dynamism about Kastellorizians and a willingness to work for a greater good.

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DR MARIA KAILIS

JOHN MANGOS

TV presenter (Sydney) “THE ONLY PLACE WHICH BRINGS ME TRUE HAPPINESS” I grew up in Australia hearing wonderful stories of Kastellorizo’s tumultuous history.

I learnt from an early age of its beauty, its majesty, its defiance, its pride, its triumphs and its tragedies; my mother is a survivor of the 1945 “Empire Patrol” disaster in which 33 people, mostly women and children, perished.

I’ve been a frequent visitor to the island over 40 years, and 10 years ago I became a part-resident after having built a home there. My family and friends all know it’s where I wish to be laid to rest. Why do I feel this way? I grew up in an environment where my family only socialized with the extended family and other Kastellorizians, holding picnics and name day celebrations.

It was indeed insular, and it was somewhat competitive with those from other parts of Greece, too. A strong sense of patriotism and resilience developed. I was personally unaware that our culture, cuisine, music and dialect was different to other Greeks; I thought our way was the norm.

With this camaraderie came a strong sense of identity and pride.

My first visit in 1981 was highly emotional, after a buildup which dominated my youth. I remember that when I was purchasing my ferry ticket from Rhodes, the ticket agent asked me

A well-known Perth medical practitioner and the daughter of the late Michael Kailis of the seafood and pearl industries fame

why I was bothering to go to such a place: “Performing your duty?” he suggested sarcastically. Offended, I told him I wanted to see where it all began, noting that I’d grown up hearing how my grandfather had been a sea-faring captain. “Everyone’s pappou was a captain,” was his cynical reply. It made me more determined to love the place.

Kastellorizo is not just in my blood. It is in my heart, my soul and my state of mind. I am known to say that my body lives in Australia but my true self lives in Kastellorizo.

I’ve always found it amusing that this microcosm which is Kastellorizo has defied convention by being so small and so diverse at the same time.

In Kastellorizo, the dimension of time becomes fluid. Past, present and future meld into each other, like the fragile ripples on the harbor at night, but there’s no confusion in this. There’s only a sense of unity, continuity and a magical variety.

It’s alluring. And it’s so profoundly Greek, albeit within such visual proximity to Turkey.

A broader view is that Australia has been a country of incredible political stability. In contrast, Greece has not; Kastellorizo was occupied by five nations in 30 years. It is impossible for this not to bond those of us who “reside” here (in Australia) but “live” there (Kastellorizo). I am proud of the delicious irony that Australia, the country and the continent, has become a suburb of Kastellorizo, the island.

“FAMILY, HERITAGE AND A CRAZY LOVE” One of the most important memories of my life was seeing my dad, Michael George Kailis, crying on our first trip to Kastellorizo in 1975, as the ferry rounded the island to reveal the incredibly magical harbor. I had never seen him cry before.

My father could see the island needed revitalizing. With my mother, Patricia, and with the help of the architect George Murray, they poured love and effort into one of the first house restorations on the island. They also commissioned Dr Norman Ashton to research ancient Megisti. And no one will ever forget my sister Amanda’s tours of the patitiria (wine presses)!

I’m not exactly sure about what parts of my personality come from Kastellorizo, but I am sure my little stocky legs that love climbing up and down mountains come from there. In my office, I have pictures and paintings of the place to gaze at every afternoon, and I think about walking up the mountain to see the sun set or diving into the amazing blue waters.

The Kastellorizian community in Perth is very special. We’re linked by customs, by family and by our love of our island.

At the very popular cooking classes of the Kastellorizian ladies’ association, we get to share traditions, family stories and good food!

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COMMUNIT Y

MARIA SKYLLAS-KAZACOS, AM

Emeritus Professor of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, University of South Wales.

A Member of the Order of Australia for her service to science and technology.

“MY LIFE AS A KAZZIE

BY MARRIAGE” I was born in Kalymnos and migrated to Australia with my family at the age of two and a half. My father had grown up in Egypt, and my mother’s family came from a Greek community in Asia Minor, so I grew up with a strong Greek-Australian identity, but without any particular affinity to a specific part of Greece. My husband Michael Kazacos, on the other hand, who made me a “Kazzie-by-marriage,” is part of a large Kastellorizian-Australian extended family who, like so many other Kastellorizians, came to Australia to work hard and build a better life for their families. As I came to know that extended family, I began to understand their deeprooted love for and loyalty to their island.

In 1985, Michael, our sons Nick and George and I set off to visit my own relatives in Kalymnos and to find our way to Kastellorizo. We travelled to Rhodes and, after some difficulties, got onto a ferry that departed for Kastellorizo at 3 am one morning. After seven hours sailing on relatively rough seas, we finally caught sight of a small island in the distance. The light morning haze caused the sea to merge with 138

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the sky, so to my eyes, it seemed that I was looking at a mystical land floating in the ether.

As we got closer to the island and started to turn into the harbor, I was overcome with emotion as the small buildings and boats came into view – it felt as if we’d been transported to a different world, a different time. Suddenly I knew why this tiny jewel in the Aegean Sea meant so much to its people and even to their descendants who had never known it.

Since that first visit to Kastellorizo in 1985, Michael and I were able to spend a few days on the island again in 2011 and, in 2014, our son George took his wife to see his ancestral land as part of their honeymoon to Greece and Europe.

In 2018, we made a point of taking our youngest son Anthony for his first visit to the land of his forefathers. The effect on him was magical, as he explored the island and heard stories of his grandparents from some of the locals. We pray that, one day soon, we’ll be able to travel together to Kastellorizo with all three of our sons and their respective families, and to pass on the flame by introducing the island to our grandchildren as well.

“WE PRAY THAT, ONE DAY SOON, WE’LL BE ABLE TO TRAVEL TOGETHER TO KASTELLORIZO WITH ALL THREE OF OUR SONS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE FAMILIES, AND TO PASS ON THE FLAME

BY INTRODUCING THE ISLAND TO OUR GRANDCHILDREN AS WELL.”

YOUR ONE-STOP SOURCE FOR INSIDE INFORMATION ON WHAT GREECE IS ALL ABOUT.

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TESTIMONY

HOME AND AWAY While thousands of Kazzies who’ve grown up honoring the island’s traditions visit the island as often as they can from half a world away, Despina Tanner chose to go a step further and try life as a full-time local.

BY DE SP I NA TA N N E R

M

y father, John Kannis, was 21 years old when he arrived in Perth, Western Australia, in 1946, with his five older siblings and his parents, as refugees who’d been displaced by the war and forced to flee Kastellorizo. They left for Australia by ship from Port Said in Egypt to join relatives who’d emigrated there after WWI, and were welcomed by an already prospering Kastellorizian community in Perth. Soon afterwards, my father opened his tailor shop, alongside other members of his family who were greengrocers, fishmongers, and cake makers.

The family brought along a rich cultural heritage of recipes for traditional Kastellorizian sweets such as halva tis nifis (the bride’s halva), katoumari, strava, and sweet preserves, all of which are Anatolian-influenced. They brought their music and dance, too, including a wedding sousta, or couple’s dance, known as Manahara, which means “Mother’s happiness.”

My mother was born in Perth, but her mother, like my father, was born in Kastellorizo. Mother took so much pleasure and pride in preparing feasts for my father’s name-day, but that was just one of many such celebrations, as we had 30 first cousins on my father’s side. Our Easter celebrations would commence, as they

Despina Tanner and her Australian husband Brian Tanner in their home on Kastellorizo.

do in Greece, at the beginning of Lent.

As children, it was always exciting to get our new clothes for Easter Saturday, and we loved attending midnight mass and having magiritsa, the special Easter soup, after the service. On Easter Sunday, the men of the family would visit each household and say “Christos anesti” (“Christ has risen”) to all the women, who would have tables prepared with dyed red eggs, kouroulakia (butter cookies) and kourambiedes (almond cookies) to receive their guests. After church in the evening, we’d celebrate the end of fasting with lamb.

For my three siblings and I, our lives were centered around these family gatherings and Greek orthodox traditions.

There was no thought of socializing outside the group; our life revolved around our relatives and the larger Kastellorizian community. Our extended family was so large that there were plenty of friends for us among our relatives. As the youngest, I was lucky enough to see all my cousins get married according to the traditions of Kastellorizo. My father, who loved singing and sang in the church, was one of the main singers for the wedding songs, too.

At home, I spoke Greek with my father, my grandmother and my aunts and uncles. My siblings and I went to a special Greek school once a week and we also attended Sunday school. Nowadays, younger people don’t speak as much Greek. The sense of identity and community is still present, although it’s less conservative in nature, and many Kastellorizians have married non-Greeks, adding variety to our future generations.

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MY FIRST TIME ON THE ISLAND My father loved Perth, and part of this love came from the fact that it was very similar to Kastellorizo: the climate, the proximity of the sea and even the landscape of the shoreline. He’d take me out at dawn on weekends to fish for octopus and to harvest sea urchins, and he’d sing me Greek songs, like Gialo Gialo, in the car.

In 1973, I was 12 and my father was 48.

He’d just sold his business and, feeling exhausted, decided to take a vacation and go back to Kastellorizo. I was thrilled that he chose to take me with him. It was his first time back since the war and, sadly, the last time he’d ever see his homeland.

We took the boat from Rhodes, arriving in the middle of the night. The waters of the harbor were calm, and the town was quiet.

As he disembarked, my father made the sign of the cross and kissed the ground.

Later, he took me to the spot where his family home once stood in the Pera Meria area.We sat on an old kaiki and he took my photo. This vacation was life-changing; coming here as a descendant of the island was very emotional and a pivotal experience. I fell in love with the place and from that moment onward dreamt of renovating a house and living here where my ancestors had lived for centuries.

THE DREAM THAT CAME TRUE Throughout my years in the hospitality industry in Australia, Kastellorizo was in my blood and soul. It was my muse for how I styled everything, culminating in my gift shop/kafeneion Boucla, in Perth.

The word boucla is what Kastellorizians call a round gold or silver brooch worn to fasten items of clothing. I chose this word because, as a circular form, it represented the full circle I was taking retracing my father’s steps and creating a business on the same street where he’d opened his first shop. I painted the walls in rich shades of ochre and red, hung tapestries, found traditional Greek furniture, and put up photos of my parents and the island.

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THROUGHOUT MY YEARS IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY IN AUSTRALIA, KASTELLORIZO WAS IN MY BLOOD AND SOUL. IT WAS MY MUSE FOR HOW I STYLED EVERYTHING, CULMINATING IN MY GIFT SHOP/ KAFENEION BOUCLA, IN PERTH.

being there.

My father died one year after we visited Kastellorizo, and my only brother passed away two years later. We spent years in mourning. I feel blessed that I had this heritage to hold on to, and the supportive network of my family. With my father’s death, my love for Kastellorizo grew. I came back to the island with my mother in 1981; it was her first visit. I returned again with my husband and my son John in 1989 and then, in 1990, my daughter Evana was conceived on Kastellorizo. I really wanted to buy a house here but, as it turned out, we didn’t get back to the island for another 15 years. When we finally did, our son and daughter, by then 18 and 15 years old respectively, fell in love with the place as I had. We bought a plot of land and, in 2007, we built a house. From 2008 onwards, I came back every year and then, in July of 2018, my husband and I started our newest adventure and moved to Kastellorizo.

The greatest beauty of the island lies in its the landscape. It’s strange, but this rugged beauty is similar to that of Australia. I feel blessed to have two homelands, Kastellorizo and Australia, two places which, at the end of the day, are not as far from each other as you might think.

LIFE ON THE ISLAND IN THE AUTUMN, winter and spring, my husband and I often start our days with a morning hike up to Avlonia, where we explore old farms and what’s left of their orchards, and look for the ancient patitiria, or stomping pits, where they used to make wine and olive oil. It’s so lush and green up there, and in the spring the wildflowers are abundant.

As a passionate gardener, discovering the beauty of the environment and the plethora of flora and fauna is such a pleasure. I love learning what grows here and how these herbs and plants were used in ancient times. The soil here is incredibly fertile and rich in minerals; the mountainside is home to oregano, thyme, sage, mint and chamomile. There are fig trees, pink peppercorn trees, olive trees, carob trees, wild pear trees, almond trees and pomegranate trees. Wild garlic grows here, as do shallots and caper bushes.

Edible wild greens grow profusely in the winter, as do chickpeas. Together with the island’s goats and sheep and, of course, the abundant fish in the sea, there’s nearly everything you need.

The island is home to many exotic flowers, including irises, white and maroon-colored lilies, crocuses, pink lisianthus, cyclamens, asphodels and different varieties of daisies. The bush with the brilliant yellow flower called Stouvi is coveted for its wood, a useful fire starter. Nasturtium flowers and leaves add color and flavor to our salads. We have begun preserving olives, capers, figs and bitter orange, and my daughter has even made syrup and flour from the ancient carob fruit.

Living here, island-bound as we are, does come with some challenges, such as having to figure out where to order things that you can’t buy here. My husband is a devoted bread maker and has sourced a biodynamic-grown ancient grain from Crete. Imagine how wonderful it would be to grow all our own fruits and vegetables, to make cheese and yogurt from goats’ and sheep’s milk like they do on other islands? My husband would love nothing more than to make wine from the native ancient grape varieties. Who knows, perhaps one day we can do all this on Kastellorizo.

TESTIMONY

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01. Despina’s great-grandmother with her husband and children, in a photo taken on Kastellorizo in 1924.

05. Despina and her mother Evangelia attend a christening in 1967.

02. With her daughter Evana.

06. The author on the island in 1981.

04. Her son, John William Tanner.

03. A photo taken with her father, John Kominos Kannis, in 1973.

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D E PA R T U R E

SWEET TREAT SWEETS ARE WELCOME treats on all happy occasions on Kastellorizo and in the Kazzie community of Australia. Visitors are welcomed with a sykalaki glyko tou koutaliou (baby fig spoon sweet) and a glass of cold water, while experienced cooks will prepare a katoumari, a sweet flaky pastry made with sugar and fragrant ground cloves. At weddings, o halvas tis nifis (“the bride’s halva”), made by the family, was a traditional treat for the happy couple; today, it’s considered a quick and easy sweet to make, and one that fills the house with a welcoming aroma.

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