Pixelscape - Summer Ending

Article by Harrys Pourouzidis
Cover photo by Georgia Papadopoulou
Edited by Harrys Pourouzidis

“Summer is over,” said a familiar voice.
“Time to get together again and set out to discover new beauties of our land, new at least to our own eyes. This time, we head a little farther south in search of large arched bridges.”

Orders like these leave no room for pleading. And so, two cars filled with equipment, smiles, and high spirits. Even at dawn, the teasing and chatter along the way did not stop for a moment.

- Pyli, Trikala — The Bridge of Saint Vissarion -

The first circled dot on the map was Pyli, in the regional unit of Trikala or Porta Pazar, as it was known in the old times. Beside it flows Portaitikos River, and at its western edge stands, firm and proud, the single-arched bridge of Saint Vissarion, a symbol of the town since 1514. Mr National Geographic informed us that this small town is built at the footsteps of Koziakas and Itamos. Together, the two mountains offer a natural passage towards southern Pindos, which is why the town was named Pyli, aka Gate in English.

The sun just showed itself in the sky when we arrived, and the group poured out onto the riverbanks to capture the beauty of the morning, feeling the cool air which, I must admit, had a slight bite to it for early September. The river’s sparse waters betrayed the scale of summer’s great drought, so severe that even the experts were puzzled by it. At the top of the bridge, the eastern sun was gentle, and the group looked like ants scattered along the banks below.

“How many thousands of feet, I wondered, had walked over this paving? How many donkeys, horses, and animals? How many armies, how many persecuted souls, how many old people, how many children?” These questions had no answers, yet they filled my thoughts with every step, until the leader gave the signal for us to gather for coffee and gossip at the nearby café.

- Kandyli Bridge -

After the hot beverages gave to our group the necessary energy, we made a short stop a little farther down to photograph another bridge, a modern one this time. Naturally, it could not compete with the old bridge’s beauty, and so we left again rather quickly.

- Ropoto-

Our next stop was Ropoto, the village of the landslide. What we experienced there is difficult to describe in words, but I will try my best.
Once upon a time, Ropoto was a thriving village, home to three hundred families and more than 800 inhabitants. Its people, mainly farmers and livestock breeders, paid little attention to the first signs of landslides and cracks, which began to appear timidly in the 1960s.

Twenty years later, Greece was caught up in a frenzy of construction, and many emigrants from the village returned to their homeland to rebuild their old houses. Unfortunately, underground water currents and heavy rainfall created the perfect conditions for the final great disaster of 2012. The village, which stood at an altitude of around 750 metres on the slopes of Karavoula, ended up dropping down a full 40 metres!
The school, the houses, the cafés, all were split in two. Only the church of the Virgin Mary remained, as if by miracle, still standing but leaning on the slope, creating something almost impossible to describe.

In a place like this, the mind plays strange games. As we approached the entrance of the church at our own risk, an incredible dizziness run through us, and we felt as though the slope is carrying you away, like gravity pulling us hard towards the ground.

I leaned against the entrance threshold, rested my head on the wall, and felt as though my brain might burst from my skull. With the effort of someone climbing a mountain, I crossed from the left side of the threshold to the right side of the opposite entrance. But on the way back, I felt as if gravity would fling me straight across to the eastern wall of the church, where the inner sanctuary once stood.

- Palaiokarya Bridge -

After almost needing travel-sickness pills to recover from the dizziness, we took the road again towards the bridge of Palaiokarya and its waterfall.
It stands there upright for 460 years, connecting Pyli with the surrounding villages of Aspropotamos. Its 26 metres of length and 10 metres of height, a work of architectural mastery, bridge the double waterfall.

Silence casts its dark veil over the place where the roar of water once underlined the grandeur of nature. The waterfalls sad remnants carved ancient traces in the stone, proving of its once-powerful presence. Now they only seem to point towards an unfortunate future.

Around it, nature still holds on to its deep green, and quite a few visitors had spread out nearby, hoping perhaps to catch sight of a “fairy” among the leaves. Our stop was brief, because the lack of water brought a small disappointment to our photographic lenses, though our next stop balanced it out somewhat.

- Dristela aka natures washing machine-

“Let’s go and see how they wash carpets and blankets here,” said the voice of our driving force. Maria’s face lit up with a sparkling smile when she saw the housewives pushing water from the bedding with their brooms at the two dristelas we visited.

“What a pity I didn’t bring my tufter rug,” our Maraki sighed.

The camera shutters fire up, enchanted by the hypnotic whirl of the water. Surprised, the householders asked to know who we were, and we happily introduced ourselves. In return, we received smiles on faces proud of their work.

A little farther on, a small taverna winked at as as we approached lunch time. The sun already at the middle of the sky made it clear it was time for rest. As always, the table was full and the conversations endless. But the time for our return eventually came, and Dimos treated us to one final stop: the oldest Byzantine church in the area.

- Porta Panagia -

Close by to the village of Pyli stands Porta Panagia, built on top of an earlier ancient Greek temple, as the marble columns and ruins inside and outside the church testify.
Two mosaics on eache side of the great entrance reveal the scale of the church’s wealth. It was founded in 1283 by the ruler of Thessaly, Ioannis Angelos Komnenos Doukas.

The experienced eye may recognise this church’s unusual feature: the mosaics I just mentioned are placed in the opposite position from that prescribed by tradition. And as if that were not enough, there is also the Virgin Mary holding the divine infant in her right hand, a rare iconographic phenomenon in Orthodox worship.

“Well, look at that,” I thought, smiling. “Some people were already bored with convention 740 years ago, and were cheekily winking at the idea of breaking the rules.”