Harry's Peloponnese Guide: Kalavrita Village Achaea Prefecture

Kalavrita is a small little village nestled in some very scenic country.

It was here that the Nazis massacred all the male population of the village in retaliation for partisan activities during WW II. It should be mentioned that since 1962 the German government has endowed schools in Kalavryta, in what seems to have been an obvious act of atonement for the atrocities committed there. More on that below.

Kalavryta

Kalavryta (which means 'beautiful springs') is known both as a beautiful mountain resort to which visitors can travel with the famous rack and pinion/narrow gage railway from Diakofto (a dramatic and beautiful train ride through spectacular countryside), and also as the site of one of the ugliest massacres, of World War II, with one of the two town clocks (on the Metropolitan church) still fixed, almost 60 years later, at the hour of the tragedy, 2:34 pm (See below).

Kalavryta is situated at 756 meters/2479feet altitude on the Voraikos river at the foot of Mt. Velia and is the chief town of its eparchy and seat of a bishop. Its population is around 2500. It is an especially appealing place in summer with its fresh air and cool mountain springs. In ancient times it was called Kynaithes, and its inhabitants were noted for their wildness, irreverence, and independence. The Aetolians destroyed the town in 220BC, but was revived under Hadrian. During the early 13th century it fell to Otto de Tournai, and in 1301 passed to the barons of Chalandritsa.

An area to the southwest of the town has been identified as the Classical Alyssos, and about one hour to the east of the town stand the ruins of 'Tremola' or the 'Kastro tis Orias', the second name related to the beautiful daughter of a Chalandritsa baron, Katherine Palaiologos, said to have committed suicide in 1463, rather than fall into Turkish hands. In modern times Kalavryta disputes with Kalamata the claim of being the first town liberated during the Greek War of Independence.

Monastery Aghia Lavra

The most famous site in the area is the celebrated monastery, Aghia Lavra, where Germanos, the Archbishop of Patras first raised the banner of revolt on 21 March 1821, to signal the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, in the 17th century chapel before the main building. His banner, with a bullet hole in the forehead of an angel in one upper corner, is on display in the museum here. This monastery, which sits among ilex woods and lines of cypresses, was first built as a hermitage in 961, and has a long history of being destroyed and rebuilt, the present monastery begun in 1839, after having been sacked in 1826 by Ibrahim Pasha. Burned by the Nazis along with Kalavryta in 1943 (and since restored) it is much visited in present times and is considered a Greek national shrine. The small museum houses, in addition to the banner of Germanos, various historical relics and medieval manuscripts. The monastery is 9km from Kalavryta, which can be bicycled or walked, though there are also taxis, often waiting at the station as well.

Cog Wheel Railway

The famous cog/rack and pinion railway with its famous train ride from Diakofto to Kalavryta is also one of the latter town's major attractions. This type of railway, which is the only one of its type in all of Greece, was developed in by an Englishman named John Blenkinsop, and refined by Swiss civil engineers.

It is a system often used in the mountains of Switzerland, enabling trains to ascend very steep stretches which would not be possible otherwise because the trains would not succeed in adhering to the tracks without special help. The help was devised in the form of a cog that drops from the train and fits into a third rail with steel teeth that fits between the usual double train tracks/rails.

The railway in the Peloponnese was built by a French-Italian company between 1885 and 1895, using both the usual kind of adhesion traction and the rack and pinion traction to negotiate the Vouraikos River Canyon. The railway ascends from an altitude of 10km/32feet in Diakofto to 725meters/2378feet during a total distance of 22km/13.64miles. The three sections that utilize the cog system total 3.6km/2.23 miles. Originally the trains were steam driven, but were replaced progressively during the 1960s with a diesel fuelled system.

Some of the old steam engines are on display at the two end points of this dramatic train ride, which includes various suspension bridges and trestles carved out of sheer limestone cliffs. The canyon over which the train passes is unbelievably steep, inspiring amazement that the railway was ever built. The village of Zachlorou , 13km from Diakofto, depends on the train for supplies and is a nice place to stop, with a 4th century Byzantine monastery and a large cave.

The Nazi massacre in Kalavryta: A memorial on the wall of the primary school directly across from the stone rail station-in the form of a mural-- honors the sad memory of the 1436 men and boys slaughtered by Austrian Nazi soldiers on a winter day in December of 1943, followed by the burning of the village. On the mural are the words: "Kalavryta, founding member of the Union of Martyred Towns, appeals to all to fight for world peace." A trail leads off from the station to the site of the slaughter, with a shrine with the single word: Peace (Irini).

The horrific retaliation for Nazi losses to Greek resistance fighters during World War II was, as in many villages all over Greece, a revenge that was vastly out of proportion in numbers to the Nazi losses and a revenge visited upon entire communities of civilians, merely because the freedom fighters came from there, or because the villagers had sheltered, supplied, and /or hid them and/or their whereabouts.

The 1436 men and boys who were machine-gunned and pushed off cliffs in Kalavryta consisted of almost the entire male population of the town (every male over the age of 15 who could be found). The women and girls (as well as babies and male children under the age of 15) would have perished as well if someone had not opened the window from which they escaped from the church in which the Nazis had locked them before setting it on fire.

As it was, they were forced to find some way to survive the bitter cold winter without their men in the ruined houses of their burned village, and to survive for the rest of their lives the bitterness of the horrible massacre. Of those who were children during that wretched winter and who are still alive today, the memory of that trauma no doubt been a dark and unforgettable shadow during their entire lives.

It should be mentioned that since 1962 the German government has endowed schools in Kalavryta, in what seems to have been an obvious act of atonement for the Nazi atrocities committed there.

Hermann Frank Meyer, Von Wien nach Kalavryta. Die blutige Spur der 117. Jäger-Division durch Serbien und Griechenland (From Vienna to Kalavryta. The bloodstained trail of the 117th Jaeger-Division through Serbia and Greece) (Moehnesee: Bibliopolis 2002)

A well-researched book about the Kalavryta massacre. Note: the author puts the number of dead at 477, maintaining that though the massacre was undisputably the largest Nazi massacre outside of the Slavonic countries, the numbers were exaggerated to 1436. He also reports that the Austrian perpetrators were never charged with their war crimes.
Below: the artificial lake: Ladona and above Cataract of Monastery Taxiarhou.

Kalavryta railway May 18th, 200X

Works to refurbish the country's only rack railway - covering the scenic route from Diakofto to Kalavryta in the northern Peloponnese - begin on Monday, the Hellenic Railway Organization said yesterday.

The 22.6-kilometer route, built during 1889-1896, is just 75 centimeters wide, making it the narrowest railway line in Europe.

The 7-million-euro reconstruction is expected to last for about a year, during which time the line will not be operating.