August 10, 2023 • 40 mins
The Venetian records from 1700 record 5 churches in Aigio, but only 3 of them are still extant today. A look at what happened and changes to the town through time using census and other records, traveler accounts, and maps.
A companion page to this episode can be found on the Helonaki website.
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Episode Transcript
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Jen (00:33):
Long ago, there was a small castle, that was toppled by the
false Maltezous and found abovethe sea in the Gulf of
Naupaktos.
The town was made again on ahill.
It belongs to the HASI of thePasha of the Morea and as a Kasi
with a degree of 150 whites.
To the north.
(00:54):
Aigio is bordered by the sea.
It is a small market town with200 low and high tiled houses
built with stone, with trees andtheir gardens.
The plain that is found to thesouth is fertile and full of
villages.
Everywhere there are pomegranateand olive trees as large as
plane trees that you could notfind the same anywhere else.
(01:19):
Many old men told me that in thecity, there are olive trees that
are 2000 years old.
I saw 40 small shops, an inn anda hamam that works in the
winter.
In July, the people bathe in thesea.
The faithless Venetians haveburned and destroyed Aigio three
times up to now.
(01:39):
Some large buildings remaindemolished.
The mosque of Sheik Afendibecause it was a stone didn't
burn as happened with all theother buildings and mosques.
To the east is where the riverof Kalavryta passes this ruined
market town, the river, whichgoes from the mountains and
empties into the Gulf ofNaupaktos to the west of the
(02:01):
town.
Two small bridges with ninearches pass over the river.
To the west of the town, thereis sweet water, which drains
from eight stone spigots.
Some good landowner showing hisbenevolence constructed a wooden
pavilion next to the runningwater.
There is the opium den of AliBaba where a few dervishes of
(02:26):
the order of Bektashi live.
Many small boats pay the opiumden a visit because it is on the
beach and it is a good site fordistraction.
Down from the shade of a largetree, the unbelievers sit and
happily spend their time.
Some pray.
Others yet eat kebabs and drinkwine.
(02:48):
And some dashing people washtheir clothes.
It is an admirable spot for anouting.
This is from travels in Greece,1668 through 1671 by Evliya
Çelebi.
This is actually a translationof the Greek translation of
Çelebi's books.
(03:09):
The Greek translation, waspublished by Demetrius Lupis in
2005.
It Includes Çelebi's travels inthe Peloponnese, Ionian islands,
Crete, and the Aegean islands,some of which are not available
in other translations.
I'm Jen Glaubius and this is theHelonaki Deep Dive a podcast
(03:31):
about mapping and analysis forhistorical and archeological
research.
In this episode, I'll discussthe town of Aigio, which was
also known as Vostitsa at thetime.
And how the town has changedover the years.
Let's dive in.
I visited Aigio in June of 2022.
(03:52):
Wandering around the streets andtaking pictures of buildings and
other interesting objects forthe Dispatches from Vostitsa
series of blog posts, that Iposted for Patreon supporters.
I took pictures of the areaaround the port where the old
railroad tracks run along thewater, along with a new walking
path.
(04:14):
Down where some warehouses fromthe heyday of exporting currents
still remain, somerehabilitated, others falling
apart.
And up above where the main partof the town has been located for
hundreds, if not thousands ofyears.
I took pictures of the townmuseum, which is based in an old
house, that unfortunately wasclosed when I tried to visit.
(04:38):
And I took pictures of thechurches that I wandered past,
including churches mentioned inthe Venetian records from 1700.
Once I was back home, I wasthinking about those churches
and I decided to georeferencethe map of the town of Vostitsa,
which is included in theVenetian records from 1700.
(05:00):
I have a photocopy from the bookof the published records.
I needed to match up at leastthree locations from the map
from 1700 to those same placesin the modern map of Aigio to do
the georeferencing to match upthe 1700 map with the modern
day.
(05:21):
The best locations for matchingup were the churches of
Taxiarchon, Faneromeni, andTheotokou.
Since the churches probablydidn't move location, even
though they had definitely beenrebuilt since 1700.
So with the three churchlocations, I was able to
(05:41):
georeference the map fairly welland found that Ermou street or
Hermes street actually matchesone of the major roads that you
see in the Venetian map.
But remember that in 1700, therewere five neighborhoods in the
town of Vostitsa, each with achurch.
(06:02):
So three of those churches, Iused for the georeferencing, but
where were the other two?
Aghios Anastasios and AghiosZorzi, which are nowhere to be
found in modern Aigio.
What exactly had happened tothose churches in the 300 years
between 1700 and 2022?
(06:24):
Of course, there have been manychanges.
There has been a lot ofdestruction from wars.
And as we talked about a fewepisodes ago, earthquakes have
caused a lot of damage in thetown of Aigio itself.
And although there's been a townin the location of Aigio, since
at least the Archaic Period.
at least 2,800 years ago andprobably longer there are
(06:47):
definitely Mycenaean remainsmaybe Middle Helladic and Early
Helladic as well.
So much, much longer.
But the center of activity inthat area has certainly shifted
through time.
It's possible in the case of anearthquake, a very large
earthquake, where there was alot of destruction, that
(07:07):
buildings were taken apart wherethey were, and perhaps rebuilt
in a slightly different area,that wasn't as destroyed.
That's one possibility toexplain why things have shifted
since 1700.
So of any place in the Vostitsaterritory.
We also have most informationabout the town of Vostitsa or
(07:31):
Aigio as it is now.
And I'm going to use both ofthese, Aigio and Vostitsa, just
so you know.
Now we know the most informationbecause the town received the
most visitors of any place inthe territory of Vostitsa, both
because it is on the coast andhad a small port.
And it was and continues to bethe administrative center for
(07:55):
the area.
So unlike the villages, we havemore reports of visits to Aigio
than to any other place in theterritory.
There were also a greatervariety of items in the town
than elsewhere.
As the Ottoman traveler EvliyaÇelebi wrote about in his
(08:16):
description of Aigio from hisvisit in 1668, which was the
passage that I read in the introto this episode, before 1700 had
multiple mosques although onlythe stone mosque of Sheik Efendi
was still standing because theothers had been destroyed by the
Venetians recently.
But in addition to that, therewas an inn and a hamam, which
(08:39):
was a bath house.
So there were definitely signsof the Ottoman occupation of the
town of Vostitsa.
So as a reminder, there's a linkto the companion page on the
Helonaki website for thisepisode.
Which will have information onall the traveler accounts that
I'm going to talk about.
(09:00):
As well as images of Aigio andwhere to find those sources and
maps and plots I've made forthis episode.
So check it out.
The link is within the shownotes.
So to look at Aigio, we're goingto look at the existing sources
of data.
The Ottoman defter from 1463.
The Venetian records from 1700and modern census records.
(09:20):
As well as traveler accounts andsketches that were made of
Aigio.
And also that report ofearthquake damage, that I talked
about a few episodes ago.
Let's start with the firsttraveler to Aigio I want to talk
about, Pausanias, who livedbetween 110 and 180 A.D.
(09:45):
Pausanias traveled around Greecelooking at antiquities at that
time and wrote about temples anddifferent buildings that were in
various places.
Pausanias provides informationthat's a little more direct
since he's talking aboutbuildings that were built only
hundreds instead of thousands ofyears ago.
(10:08):
So for Aigio, Pausanias wrotethat there was an ancient
sanctuary of Elithia the goddessof childbirth and midwifery.
There was a precinct ofAsclepius, which was probably an
area where people would come forhealing, since Asclepius was the
God of healing.
There was a temple of Athena.
(10:28):
There was a Grove dedicated toHera.
There was a theater and next toit, a sanctuary of Dionysus.
And those two go together sinceDionysus with his revelry, was
often the patron of the theater.
There was a marketplace, as youwould expect, an agora.
And with the Agora, there was aprecinct of Zeus and a sanctuary
(10:51):
of Artemis.
Outside the marketplace, butnext to it, there was a temple
shared by Apollo and Artemis.
So she had a sanctuary withinthe marketplace and then shared
a temple just next beside it.
All of this was in the upperpart of Aigio.
Then there's a cliff and a smallpiece of land next to the water.
Down by the water, there was asanctuary of Aphrodite.
(11:15):
There was a sanctuary ofPoseidon, which you would expect
him to have a sanctuary near thewater since he's the God of the
sea.
There was a sanctuary of themaiden daughter of Demeter.
So also known as Persephone.
There was a sanctuary of Zeus,the assembler.
And this was where according tothe Iliad of Homer, this is
where Agamemnon had assembledthe Greeks for the war against
(11:38):
Troy.
We're not done yet.
There's also a sanctuary ofDemeter Panachaean, so Demeter
of all of, Achaea, the area ofthe Northwestern Peloponnesus.
And there was a sanctuary ofsafety.
So there was a lot of stuff downby the water which was down
(11:59):
below.
As well as things up above inthe main part of the town.
So this is the state of Aigio inthe second century A.D., during
the Roman period.
Some of the Roman era forum, themarketplace has been identified
in Aigio and has been excavatedand other buildings as well.
(12:23):
But none of those otherbuildings have been clearly
identified.
Even though Pausanias has thisdescription.
There hasn't been anythingidentifying to describe them.
And all the things that havebeen excavated are in the upper
main part of the town.
There's nothing from thisperiod, seemingly, in the lower
part by the water.
(12:46):
And this makes sense becausewith destruction, whether from
warfare or natural disaster,like earthquakes.
The area by the water definitelygot more of a pummeling.
It was destroyed many times bytsunamis as will be described in
traveler accounts coming up injust a little bit.
(13:06):
But even if both parts, theupper and lower part were
destroyed equally.
Many times the stones from thosebuildings were taken out.
Because there are no longer partof a standing building and they
were placed into a new building.
From the Roman period, thenGreece becomes part of the
(13:27):
Byzantine empire.
And there's that period, whenthere are migrations or
invasions or incursions bySlavic peoples.
So you have an infusion of newpeople into the area, with their
own language.
Up until that point, this townhad been known as Aigio, but
(13:51):
afterwards, it gets a moreSlavic name, Vostitsa.
And the name Vostitsa, first isattested in the Chronicle of the
Morea.
So after the Franks gainedcontrol of the Peloponnesus,
when it was the principality ofAchaia after 1204 after the
Fourth Crusade.
(14:12):
There are four versions of theChronicle of the Morea in
different languages.
So there's a Greek version, aFrench version, an Italian
version, and a version inAragonese, which is a type of
Spanish.
All four versions mentionedVostitsa because it was one of
the baronies given out todifferent knights after
(14:33):
Villehardouin took control ofthe Peloponnesus.
But, each version providesdifferent details.
They don't agree entirely inwhat was provided in each
barony.
None of the four versions evenagree on the number of baronies.
It gets pretty confusing.
So I made myself a chart.
(14:54):
And if you'd like to followalong, you can find that chart
on the companion page for thisepisode.
When the baronies of theFrankish period are written
about, the number of baronies isalways 12.
And from looking at these fourversions, there's only one way
that there are 12 baroniesrecorded in any of these
(15:16):
versions, which you can see ifyou look at the chart.
I started looking at thisbecause I was interested in
whether or not Vostitsa had acastle, because if you remember
from the intro passage, Çelebiwrote that Vostitsa had a
castle, but it had beendestroyed by the false
Maltezous.
And so I was interested inwhether or not from the Frankish
(15:39):
period, there was a castle.
So I started looking into thesefour versions.
Now of these four, the Frenchversion does not mention castles
at all.
So we're mostly going todisregard it.
I just want to say that thereare nine baronies in the French
version.
Although, if you include thefour fiefdoms that are given to
(16:00):
four bishops, the number goes to13.
Neither of those is the number12.
So disregarding the Frenchversion.
Now we're looking at the Greekversion, the Aragonese and
Italian version.
From these three versions,there's only one possible
configuration that adds up to12.
The Greek version includes 10baronies, 13, if you include the
(16:24):
knight orders and 20, if youalso include the bishops.
The Greek version mentioned sixcastles.
The Aragonese version has 14baronies, which goes up to 17,
if you include the three knightorders.
And 25, if you also include thebishops.
(16:45):
And the Aragonese version saysthat 10 of these had castles and
is the only one that mentionsVostitsa having a castle, but it
does say that Vostitsa has acastle.
The Italian version, mentioned11 baronies, which if you
include the German order wouldbe 12.
This is the only possible 12.
(17:06):
But it also mentions fiefdomsfor seven bishops, which brings
the number up to 19.
And the Italian version alsomentioned six castles, like the
Greek version does.
So it's interesting.
In the three accounts thatmentioned castles the Greek,
Aragonese, and Italian.
There are four places that arealways mentioned with a castle.
(17:28):
That's Karytaina, Veligosti,Geraki, and Chalandritsa.
If you want to look at wherethese locations are, I've
included a map made by someoneelse of the medieval of the
middle ages in Greece locations.
And you can find that on thecompanion page as well.
All right, so four locationsalways have a castle.
(17:50):
There are two locations, twoplaces that only have a castle
in the Aragonese version, thatare also mentioned in the other
versions of the Chronicle.
And those places are Vostitsaand Passavant.
It's possible that thoselocations didn't have a castle
(18:11):
and it's only the Aragonese,they just included a castle for
some reason.
But the Aragonese version doesnot include a castle for
everywhere.
And there are two placesmentioned in all three accounts
of castles that do not have acastle at any of those accounts.
The first place is Gritsena,which is also known as Lakkos.
(18:33):
And then there's Patras.
Which.
I'm not sure aboutGritsena/Lakkos, but Patras,
Patras definitely has a castle.
It still has a castle.
And the castle in fact was builtin the sixth century A.D.
by the Byzantine emperorJustinian.
So there was definitely a castlethere.
But it's not mentioned in any ofthese four accounts, which is
(18:57):
super weird.
But it brings us to the factthat, besides the Aragonese
version of the Chronicle of theMorea, which where it has more
castles.
The only other account thatmentione Vostitsa with the
castle that I've been able tofind was Evliya Çelebi, the
Ottoman traveler.
Who traveled in the late 1600s,and mentioned a castle that the
(19:22):
false Maltezous had destroyed.
So if Vostitsa ever had a castlein the Frankish period.
It definitely has not survivedto the present day.
It hadn't survived by the late1600s when Çelebi was traveling
there.
Our next source of informationabout the town of Vostitsa is
(19:42):
from the Ottoman defter from1463.
In this first Ottoman defter ofthe Morea Vostitsa was among the
largest of towns that was inthis record.
But unlike some of those othertowns, Vostitsa was not divided
into neighborhoods.
So some of the large towns hadneighborhoods, Vostitsa did not
(20:04):
in this record.
Within the town, there were 159households that were taxed along
with 64 bachelors and 26 widows.
If we use a family size of about4.21 people, understanding that
people can't be partial, we geta number of around 760 people.
(20:24):
So a population around thatmaybe a little bit larger or
smaller for 1463.
Along with that we know from thedefter that there were vineyards
in the town, there were 85 olivetrees, 200 fruit trees.
This is interesting.
557 Mulberry trees, which werefor silk production.
(20:48):
The silkworms were fed onMulberry leaves.
There were also flax, wheat,barley, cotton.
There was a water mill in thetown.
And there were also salt pans.
It was along the coast.
And so there was salt productionin the town of Vostitsa.
And remember, this was right atthe end of the Byzantine period,
(21:11):
at the beginning of the Ottomanperiod.
So there were no mosques orother Turkish buildings there at
that time.
Our next account of the town ofVostitsa comes 200 years later,
and it's by the Ottoman travelerEvliya Çelebi that I read in
introduction to this episode.
(21:31):
Çelebi was visitingAigio/Vostitsa at the end of the
long 30 year war between theVenetians and the Ottomans in
which the Ottomans took controlof Crete.
And during that time, theVenetians had tried to attack
Ottoman holdings in thePeloponnese to try to draw them
off, which didn't work.
And so that's why Çelebi writesthat the Venetians had burned
(21:55):
and destroyed Aigio three timesto that point.
And Vostitsa, the town of Aigiowas still partially destroyed
when Çelebi visited.
So the only mosque standing wasthe one of stone by Sheik
Efendi, all other buildings, andmosques of that sort had been
(22:15):
burned.
The town still had an inn and ahamam.
The hamam being a bath house.
There were 40 small shops thatÇelebi saw.
And the town had 200 houses thatwere built of stone.
So it was still in place, eventhough there were signs of
(22:37):
destruction when Çelebi visited.
And of course Çelebi talkedabout the water that drained
from the eight stone spigots, sothe fountain.
Which will show up more and moreas Western Europeans start to
visit And then interesting, hetalks about an opium den, along
the coast, close by thefountain.
(22:58):
And this was a place, not justfor the opium den, but where
other people would come and eatand basically hang out, wash
their clothes, The nextinformation we have about the
town of Vostitsa, is theVenetian cadaster from 1700.
The cadaster itself dates 30years after Çelebi had visited
(23:20):
and it's halfway through the 30year Venetian period.
In addition to the actualwritten records of what and who
were in the town of Vostitsa,there's also a map of the town
itself And it provides somecomplimentary information, but
it doesn't show everything thatyou have in the written record.
(23:41):
So keep that in mind.
So I'm going to be talking aboutinformation from both the map
and the written cadaster aboutwhat Vostitsa was like in 1700.
Let's start with churches.
The cadaster says that there wasone newly constructed Latin
church, and this would have beenfor the Venetians themselves,
since they were not Orthodox.
(24:02):
There were also five Greekchurches in good repair.
And so these would be the fivechurches that the five
neighborhoods are centered on.
There was also one mosque in thetown, and this was probably
still the stone mosque of SheikEfendi that Çelebi had described
30 years earlier.
Of course the mosque probablywasn't in use during the
(24:26):
Venetian period.
It probably was used for otherthings at that point.
And the mosque does not show upon the map.
I also could not find the Latinchurch on the map either.
The five Greek churches and theneighborhoods are on there.
So let's talk about thoseneighborhoods.
There were five in number.
And each one was centered arounda church.
(24:48):
So the church of MadonnaFanaromeni had 140 houses.
The neighborhood of MichelArchangelo had 34 houses.
The neighborhood of St.
Zorzi had 118 houses.
St.
Anatasi neighborhood has 79houses and the neighborhood of
Madonna ton Xenon had 78 houses.
(25:11):
So the smallest at this pointwas Michel Archangelo with only
34 and the largest was MadonnaFanaromeni with 140 houses.
There were 454 total buildingsin Vostitsa in 1700.
That doesn't include otherinfrastructure, such as four
mills that were intact.
(25:33):
They also counted one mill thathad been destroyed and was still
in disrepair.
There was one bridge and there'salso one good fountain and six
destroyed fountains.
So interestingly, only onefountain use in the town.
Perhaps, the one that's down bythe coast, that had been in use
for a long time.
(25:53):
We have information about thepopulation of the town itself as
well from two different sources.
So there's 435 families listedin the Venetian cadaster from
1700.
There's another census record,by a Venetian official called
Grimani, also dating to 1700.
(26:14):
And he only recorded 383families.
So.
About 50 families, fewer thanthe cadaster had.
So using again, a family size ofaround 4.21 people, we get a
range of around 1,613 people to1,832.
(26:36):
So if you look at the plot ofpopulation through time, I
plotted it as 1,723, the averageof those two numbers.
Our next information aboutVostitsa comes from over 50
years later from RichardChandler, who was in Greece
during 1765 through 1766 andpublished a book Travels in
(26:56):
Greece in 1776.
And he mostly spent his timetalking about the plane tree and
the spring with little mentionof the town up above.
The plane tree and the springsare very common with the
traveler accounts that we havefrom people who were looking at
antiquities in Greece during theOttoman period.
(27:19):
There are many images of thelarge plane tree and the
fountains.
And I've posted some of those onthe companion page as well.
So you can see the variety ofthe ways that people depicted
Vostitsa.
And it's almost always the planetree and the fountains, or if
it's from a distance, it mighthave a little plane tree, but up
(27:39):
above the cliffs, you can seespires of churches.
So take a look at those on thecompanion page.
A few years later in 1799 therewas a visit by Pouqueville, the
French traveler.
He was not especially impressedwith the town.
Because he was looking forantiquities.
(27:59):
So the only thing he thought wasthere from antiquity was the
fountain.
So Pouqueville wasn't impressed.
He talked about the fountain.
He mentioned that they hadplaces to drink coffee beneath
the large plane tree.
And also that there were smallvessels at the port of Vostitsa
that loaded raw silk, cheese,currents, undried skins of oxen,
(28:22):
brandy, wines, and sardines.
And they would ship those thingsto the port of Patras, which is
further to the west.
And at Patras, these items wouldbe loaded into larger vessels
for Italy, according toPouqueville.
He also provided a drawing ofthe 12 fountains that you can
see on the companion page.
So shortly after that, ColonelMartin Leake, who was in the
(28:45):
British military, but veryinterested in antiquities,
visited in 1806.
He describes the town ofVostitsa as being on the hill,
separated from the water by acliff 50 feet high, which
definitely checks out.
Again, he talks about the largeplane tree shading the fountains
next to the small port.
So the thing that everybodytalks about.
(29:08):
He also talks about the currentsand other produce, which came
from all over the NorthernPeloponnese and shipped from
Vostitsa.
He mentioned the one mosque intown.
And that there were 30 Turkishfamilies and about three to 400
Greek families living inVostitsa at that time.
Among the Greek families weresome newly arrived from
(29:29):
Galaxidi, on the north shore ofthe Gulf of Corinth.
So just across the Gulf ofCorinth.
They had left their home ofGalaxidi duty due to problems
with Ali Pasha, who was fromIoannina and in charge of that
area.
So they came across the Gulf ofCorinth and they settled the
small area of land between themain part of town up above and
(29:51):
the cliff itself.
And that area is still known asthe Galaxidi in Aigio.
Leake was also interested inantiquities.
He saw more than Pouqueville.
He saw signs of ancientsettlement.
He saw pottery.
There were ancient graves.
Architectural fragments andbroken tiles.
And he noted spolia of columnsand base reliefs in both a
(30:15):
church and in a private home inAigio.
So there were pieces ofantiquity that were visible.
If not the large temples thatyou could still see in Athens
and other parts of Greece atthat time.
(30:36):
Leake visited in 1806.
11 years later in 1817, therewas that large earthquake that
damaged most of Aigio that Italked about a few episodes ago.
That report gives us some reallygood information about the
neighborhoods of Aigio, becauseit describes damage by
neighborhood.
(30:56):
To start with, there was aTurkish quarter, which had 62
houses, 52 shops and six ovens,which think of an oven as a
common oven where people wouldbake their bread.
Two important houses had beendamaged in the Turkish quarter,
as well as 33 of the housesinhabited by Turkish people.
So over half.
22 of the shops damaged, four ofthe ovens.
(31:18):
So a lot of damage.
Minor damage to 24 furtherhouses, 30 shops and only five
houses and two ovens and a Sufimonastic complex were undamaged.
The mosque itself, presumablythe one of stone was completely
destroyed.
So it did not make it throughthis earthquake.
(31:40):
In the neighborhood ofFanaromeni, there were 208 total
houses.
Over half of them, 112 wereseriously damaged, 73 could be
repaired, and 23 were undamaged.
The church of the blessed VirginMary, Fanaromeni, was also
undamaged by this earthquake.
The neighborhood of St MichaelArcangelo, which had 270 houses
(32:05):
total.
Of the 270, 218 were seriouslydamaged.
With only seven undamagedbuildings.
And the church itself was splitfrom the top to the bottom.
So a lot of damage in thatneighborhood.
The neighborhood of St Zorzi,there's no report, except that
(32:26):
there was a very old church andbelfry of St.
George, St.
Zorzi, which had been seriouslydamaged.
But no mention of houses orother buildings at all, except
for the church.
And that it was a very oldchurch.
In the neighborhood of Galaxidi,so those immigrants from the
north coast of the Gulf ofCorinth.
There were 69 houses total, onlythree were seriously damaged, 21
(32:50):
weren't touched at all, and 45could be repaired.
The last neighborhood was,Issodia or Madonna ton Xenon.
There were 83 houses total, ofwhich 82 were seriously damaged.
Only one house was undamaged andthe church was damaged as well.
So from this report on thedamage from the 1817 earthquake
(33:15):
note that the only thing in St.
Zorzi that neighborhood was thechurch.
And there's no mention of theneighborhood of St.
Atanasi at all.
This report from 1817 and theVenetian cadastral records from
1700 are the only two thatmentioned the number of
buildings per neighborhood.
And so I've plotted that outjust to see the change from 1700
(33:36):
to 1817.
And you can find that plot onthe companion page.
Shortly after that was the Greekrevolution.
There was definitely damage tothe town during that time.
But our next source ofinformation is from 1830, from
the Expedition Scientifique deMoree, the French expedition.
(33:59):
One of their reports was onarchitecture and antiquities.
And from that report, we knowthat there were both medieval
and ancient reliefs in the town.
And there was an inscriptionthat had been part of the church
of Eisodia Theotokou, which isalso known as Madonna ton Xenon,
so it changed names throughtime.
(34:19):
But there isn't much else aboutthe state of the town,
unfortunately, cause that wouldbe really interesting.
And after that, what I have arethe modern Greek censuses.
So 1879, there was a populationof 5,311.
And the population mostly goesup from there.
Except there's a dip between1907 and 1920 due to out
(34:40):
migration.
And then between 1920 and 1928,there's a huge increase in
population.
And that's probably immigrationdue to the population exchanges
at the end of the Balkan wars.
Greece and Turkey exchangedOrthodox and Muslim populations.
So there was a massive change inpopulation at that time.
(35:03):
This is all very interesting,but the information, that I have
from these reports doesn'tnecessarily tell me what
happened with Vostitsa.
The 1817 report of earthquakedamage by neighborhood is really
interesting, but it's reallygood to map out these things as
well.
There's a map from 1700 thatI've geo-referenced onto present
(35:26):
day satellite imagery, and itmatches the three churches that
still exist, and Ermou street.
Not much else as similar.
And so, the information aboutneighborhoods is interesting,
but I like to see maps.
I need to kind of see it inperson.
So I went looking for maps ofAigio, between 1700 and today,
just to get a better idea ofwhat was going on.
(35:48):
I ended up finding an 1836 map,that was published in a book.
And that map, interestinglyshows those three churches that
still exist, plus Agios Andreas,which I had taken pictures of in
June, 2022.
Agios Andreas is the church inGalaxidi, so that new part after
(36:10):
the immigration from the northcoast of the Gulf of Corinth.
It also has Ermou street.
So there's continuity betweenthe three churches and Ermou
street.
New information from the map arethe houses of Galaxidi and the
new church Agios Andreas.
Interesting enough though, thetown itself stops west of where
(36:32):
the neighborhoods of St.
Zorzi and St.
Atanasi were, the two missingones.
The town stops west of there.
And so that shows in 1700, thetown had shifted to the west
over the past 130 years afterdestruction from war and
earthquakes.
And of course there's moredestruction that happened with a
(36:53):
big earthquake in 1860s, thatfurther damaged different
churches and led to newneoclassical churches that were
built.
And so we know that.
The earth 1817 earthquakereport.
Didn't have a neighborhood for aSt.
And the only thing in St Zorziwas the very old church, because
(37:15):
the shuttle, the settlement hadshifted to the west.
Their neighborhoods had ceasedto exist by that time.
And now for some endnotes.
I want to mention that I did allof the georeferencing in the
qGIS geographical mappingsoftware.
All statistical analysis andplots were done using the Python
(37:37):
programming language.
The book that I got the 1836 mapfrom itself is very interesting.
The book title is urban planningand the Greek state 1833 through
1890.
It's by Dora Monioudi-Gavala andpublished in 2012.
The book is written in Greekwith English translations of
(37:59):
most of the text.
And it's super interesting.
When the Greek state wasestablished the reign of king
Otto.
So remember he was Bavarianwho's German.
He came in and he tried to makeGreece more like quote unquote
European countries.
There was a decree of 1835.
(38:20):
Entitled on the sanitaryconstruction of cities and
towns.
That roads were to be built onrectangular grid and oriented.
So all buildings receivesunlight.
This all sounds great.
The only problem withrectangular grids is it doesn't
take into account the topographyof the land.
Maybe you can't really do arectangular grid and it
(38:42):
definitely doesn't take intoaccount the older areas that
were constructed without a grid.
And so there was a map of a planfor Aigio that dated to 1835
that had a rectangular gridoverlaid on some of the newer
areas of Aigio There were partsof town west of the church of
Fanaromeni, which had been theWestern most area in the 1700
(39:07):
map.
And those areas have a regulargrid.
And you can see that in thestreet plan today.
Thanks for listening.
Email questions or comments todeepdive@helonaki.com or ask
them on the Helonaki Deep DiveFacebook page.
Show notes with links toresources mentioned in this
episode will be available athelonaki.com.
(39:29):
That's H E L O N A K i.com.
My thanks to Patreon supportersat the geospatial analyst level,
Janice and Jerry Farrell.
Your support keeps the Helonakideep dive going.
The Helonaki Deep Dive iswritten and produced by me, Jen
Glaubius of the Helonaki.
The theme music is Deep Ocean,instrumental by Dan o of dan o
(39:52):
songs.com, additional soundsfrom zap splat.com.
Thanks for listening.
Long ago, there was a small castle, that was toppled by the
false Maltezous and found abovethe sea in the Gulf of
Naupaktos.
The town was made again on ahill.
It belongs to the HASI of thePasha of the Morea and as a Kasi
with a degree of 150 whites.
To the north.
(00:54):
Aigio is bordered by the sea.
It is a small market town with200 low and high tiled houses
built with stone, with trees andtheir gardens.
The plain that is found to thesouth is fertile and full of
villages.
Everywhere there are pomegranateand olive trees as large as
plane trees that you could notfind the same anywhere else.
(01:19):
Many old men told me that in thecity, there are olive trees that
are 2000 years old.
I saw 40 small shops, an inn anda hamam that works in the
winter.
In July, the people bathe in thesea.
The faithless Venetians haveburned and destroyed Aigio three
times up to now.
(01:39):
Some large buildings remaindemolished.
The mosque of Sheik Afendibecause it was a stone didn't
burn as happened with all theother buildings and mosques.
To the east is where the riverof Kalavryta passes this ruined
market town, the river, whichgoes from the mountains and
empties into the Gulf ofNaupaktos to the west of the
(02:01):
town.
Two small bridges with ninearches pass over the river.
To the west of the town, thereis sweet water, which drains
from eight stone spigots.
Some good landowner showing hisbenevolence constructed a wooden
pavilion next to the runningwater.
There is the opium den of AliBaba where a few dervishes of
(02:26):
the order of Bektashi live.
Many small boats pay the opiumden a visit because it is on the
beach and it is a good site fordistraction.
Down from the shade of a largetree, the unbelievers sit and
happily spend their time.
Some pray.
Others yet eat kebabs and drinkwine.
(02:48):
And some dashing people washtheir clothes.
It is an admirable spot for anouting.
This is from travels in Greece,1668 through 1671 by Evliya
Çelebi.
This is actually a translationof the Greek translation of
Çelebi's books.
(03:09):
The Greek translation, waspublished by Demetrius Lupis in
2005.
It Includes Çelebi's travels inthe Peloponnese, Ionian islands,
Crete, and the Aegean islands,some of which are not available
in other translations.
I'm Jen Glaubius and this is theHelonaki Deep Dive a podcast
(03:31):
about mapping and analysis forhistorical and archeological
research.
In this episode, I'll discussthe town of Aigio, which was
also known as Vostitsa at thetime.
And how the town has changedover the years.
Let's dive in.
I visited Aigio in June of 2022.
(03:52):
Wandering around the streets andtaking pictures of buildings and
other interesting objects forthe Dispatches from Vostitsa
series of blog posts, that Iposted for Patreon supporters.
I took pictures of the areaaround the port where the old
railroad tracks run along thewater, along with a new walking
path.
(04:14):
Down where some warehouses fromthe heyday of exporting currents
still remain, somerehabilitated, others falling
apart.
And up above where the main partof the town has been located for
hundreds, if not thousands ofyears.
I took pictures of the townmuseum, which is based in an old
house, that unfortunately wasclosed when I tried to visit.
(04:38):
And I took pictures of thechurches that I wandered past,
including churches mentioned inthe Venetian records from 1700.
Once I was back home, I wasthinking about those churches
and I decided to georeferencethe map of the town of Vostitsa,
which is included in theVenetian records from 1700.
(05:00):
I have a photocopy from the bookof the published records.
I needed to match up at leastthree locations from the map
from 1700 to those same placesin the modern map of Aigio to do
the georeferencing to match upthe 1700 map with the modern
day.
(05:21):
The best locations for matchingup were the churches of
Taxiarchon, Faneromeni, andTheotokou.
Since the churches probablydidn't move location, even
though they had definitely beenrebuilt since 1700.
So with the three churchlocations, I was able to
(05:41):
georeference the map fairly welland found that Ermou street or
Hermes street actually matchesone of the major roads that you
see in the Venetian map.
But remember that in 1700, therewere five neighborhoods in the
town of Vostitsa, each with achurch.
(06:02):
So three of those churches, Iused for the georeferencing, but
where were the other two?
Aghios Anastasios and AghiosZorzi, which are nowhere to be
found in modern Aigio.
What exactly had happened tothose churches in the 300 years
between 1700 and 2022?
(06:24):
Of course, there have been manychanges.
There has been a lot ofdestruction from wars.
And as we talked about a fewepisodes ago, earthquakes have
caused a lot of damage in thetown of Aigio itself.
And although there's been a townin the location of Aigio, since
at least the Archaic Period.
at least 2,800 years ago andprobably longer there are
(06:47):
definitely Mycenaean remainsmaybe Middle Helladic and Early
Helladic as well.
So much, much longer.
But the center of activity inthat area has certainly shifted
through time.
It's possible in the case of anearthquake, a very large
earthquake, where there was alot of destruction, that
(07:07):
buildings were taken apart wherethey were, and perhaps rebuilt
in a slightly different area,that wasn't as destroyed.
That's one possibility toexplain why things have shifted
since 1700.
So of any place in the Vostitsaterritory.
We also have most informationabout the town of Vostitsa or
(07:31):
Aigio as it is now.
And I'm going to use both ofthese, Aigio and Vostitsa, just
so you know.
Now we know the most informationbecause the town received the
most visitors of any place inthe territory of Vostitsa, both
because it is on the coast andhad a small port.
And it was and continues to bethe administrative center for
(07:55):
the area.
So unlike the villages, we havemore reports of visits to Aigio
than to any other place in theterritory.
There were also a greatervariety of items in the town
than elsewhere.
As the Ottoman traveler EvliyaÇelebi wrote about in his
(08:16):
description of Aigio from hisvisit in 1668, which was the
passage that I read in the introto this episode, before 1700 had
multiple mosques although onlythe stone mosque of Sheik Efendi
was still standing because theothers had been destroyed by the
Venetians recently.
But in addition to that, therewas an inn and a hamam, which
(08:39):
was a bath house.
So there were definitely signsof the Ottoman occupation of the
town of Vostitsa.
So as a reminder, there's a linkto the companion page on the
Helonaki website for thisepisode.
Which will have information onall the traveler accounts that
I'm going to talk about.
(09:00):
As well as images of Aigio andwhere to find those sources and
maps and plots I've made forthis episode.
So check it out.
The link is within the shownotes.
So to look at Aigio, we're goingto look at the existing sources
of data.
The Ottoman defter from 1463.
The Venetian records from 1700and modern census records.
(09:20):
As well as traveler accounts andsketches that were made of
Aigio.
And also that report ofearthquake damage, that I talked
about a few episodes ago.
Let's start with the firsttraveler to Aigio I want to talk
about, Pausanias, who livedbetween 110 and 180 A.D.
(09:45):
Pausanias traveled around Greecelooking at antiquities at that
time and wrote about temples anddifferent buildings that were in
various places.
Pausanias provides informationthat's a little more direct
since he's talking aboutbuildings that were built only
hundreds instead of thousands ofyears ago.
(10:08):
So for Aigio, Pausanias wrotethat there was an ancient
sanctuary of Elithia the goddessof childbirth and midwifery.
There was a precinct ofAsclepius, which was probably an
area where people would come forhealing, since Asclepius was the
God of healing.
There was a temple of Athena.
(10:28):
There was a Grove dedicated toHera.
There was a theater and next toit, a sanctuary of Dionysus.
And those two go together sinceDionysus with his revelry, was
often the patron of the theater.
There was a marketplace, as youwould expect, an agora.
And with the Agora, there was aprecinct of Zeus and a sanctuary
(10:51):
of Artemis.
Outside the marketplace, butnext to it, there was a temple
shared by Apollo and Artemis.
So she had a sanctuary withinthe marketplace and then shared
a temple just next beside it.
All of this was in the upperpart of Aigio.
Then there's a cliff and a smallpiece of land next to the water.
Down by the water, there was asanctuary of Aphrodite.
(11:15):
There was a sanctuary ofPoseidon, which you would expect
him to have a sanctuary near thewater since he's the God of the
sea.
There was a sanctuary of themaiden daughter of Demeter.
So also known as Persephone.
There was a sanctuary of Zeus,the assembler.
And this was where according tothe Iliad of Homer, this is
where Agamemnon had assembledthe Greeks for the war against
(11:38):
Troy.
We're not done yet.
There's also a sanctuary ofDemeter Panachaean, so Demeter
of all of, Achaea, the area ofthe Northwestern Peloponnesus.
And there was a sanctuary ofsafety.
So there was a lot of stuff downby the water which was down
(11:59):
below.
As well as things up above inthe main part of the town.
So this is the state of Aigio inthe second century A.D., during
the Roman period.
Some of the Roman era forum, themarketplace has been identified
in Aigio and has been excavatedand other buildings as well.
(12:23):
But none of those otherbuildings have been clearly
identified.
Even though Pausanias has thisdescription.
There hasn't been anythingidentifying to describe them.
And all the things that havebeen excavated are in the upper
main part of the town.
There's nothing from thisperiod, seemingly, in the lower
part by the water.
(12:46):
And this makes sense becausewith destruction, whether from
warfare or natural disaster,like earthquakes.
The area by the water definitelygot more of a pummeling.
It was destroyed many times bytsunamis as will be described in
traveler accounts coming up injust a little bit.
(13:06):
But even if both parts, theupper and lower part were
destroyed equally.
Many times the stones from thosebuildings were taken out.
Because there are no longer partof a standing building and they
were placed into a new building.
From the Roman period, thenGreece becomes part of the
(13:27):
Byzantine empire.
And there's that period, whenthere are migrations or
invasions or incursions bySlavic peoples.
So you have an infusion of newpeople into the area, with their
own language.
Up until that point, this townhad been known as Aigio, but
(13:51):
afterwards, it gets a moreSlavic name, Vostitsa.
And the name Vostitsa, first isattested in the Chronicle of the
Morea.
So after the Franks gainedcontrol of the Peloponnesus,
when it was the principality ofAchaia after 1204 after the
Fourth Crusade.
(14:12):
There are four versions of theChronicle of the Morea in
different languages.
So there's a Greek version, aFrench version, an Italian
version, and a version inAragonese, which is a type of
Spanish.
All four versions mentionedVostitsa because it was one of
the baronies given out todifferent knights after
(14:33):
Villehardouin took control ofthe Peloponnesus.
But, each version providesdifferent details.
They don't agree entirely inwhat was provided in each
barony.
None of the four versions evenagree on the number of baronies.
It gets pretty confusing.
So I made myself a chart.
(14:54):
And if you'd like to followalong, you can find that chart
on the companion page for thisepisode.
When the baronies of theFrankish period are written
about, the number of baronies isalways 12.
And from looking at these fourversions, there's only one way
that there are 12 baroniesrecorded in any of these
(15:16):
versions, which you can see ifyou look at the chart.
I started looking at thisbecause I was interested in
whether or not Vostitsa had acastle, because if you remember
from the intro passage, Çelebiwrote that Vostitsa had a
castle, but it had beendestroyed by the false
Maltezous.
And so I was interested inwhether or not from the Frankish
(15:39):
period, there was a castle.
So I started looking into thesefour versions.
Now of these four, the Frenchversion does not mention castles
at all.
So we're mostly going todisregard it.
I just want to say that thereare nine baronies in the French
version.
Although, if you include thefour fiefdoms that are given to
(16:00):
four bishops, the number goes to13.
Neither of those is the number12.
So disregarding the Frenchversion.
Now we're looking at the Greekversion, the Aragonese and
Italian version.
From these three versions,there's only one possible
configuration that adds up to12.
The Greek version includes 10baronies, 13, if you include the
(16:24):
knight orders and 20, if youalso include the bishops.
The Greek version mentioned sixcastles.
The Aragonese version has 14baronies, which goes up to 17,
if you include the three knightorders.
And 25, if you also include thebishops.
(16:45):
And the Aragonese version saysthat 10 of these had castles and
is the only one that mentionsVostitsa having a castle, but it
does say that Vostitsa has acastle.
The Italian version, mentioned11 baronies, which if you
include the German order wouldbe 12.
This is the only possible 12.
(17:06):
But it also mentions fiefdomsfor seven bishops, which brings
the number up to 19.
And the Italian version alsomentioned six castles, like the
Greek version does.
So it's interesting.
In the three accounts thatmentioned castles the Greek,
Aragonese, and Italian.
There are four places that arealways mentioned with a castle.
(17:28):
That's Karytaina, Veligosti,Geraki, and Chalandritsa.
If you want to look at wherethese locations are, I've
included a map made by someoneelse of the medieval of the
middle ages in Greece locations.
And you can find that on thecompanion page as well.
All right, so four locationsalways have a castle.
(17:50):
There are two locations, twoplaces that only have a castle
in the Aragonese version, thatare also mentioned in the other
versions of the Chronicle.
And those places are Vostitsaand Passavant.
It's possible that thoselocations didn't have a castle
(18:11):
and it's only the Aragonese,they just included a castle for
some reason.
But the Aragonese version doesnot include a castle for
everywhere.
And there are two placesmentioned in all three accounts
of castles that do not have acastle at any of those accounts.
The first place is Gritsena,which is also known as Lakkos.
(18:33):
And then there's Patras.
Which.
I'm not sure aboutGritsena/Lakkos, but Patras,
Patras definitely has a castle.
It still has a castle.
And the castle in fact was builtin the sixth century A.D.
by the Byzantine emperorJustinian.
So there was definitely a castlethere.
But it's not mentioned in any ofthese four accounts, which is
(18:57):
super weird.
But it brings us to the factthat, besides the Aragonese
version of the Chronicle of theMorea, which where it has more
castles.
The only other account thatmentione Vostitsa with the
castle that I've been able tofind was Evliya Çelebi, the
Ottoman traveler.
Who traveled in the late 1600s,and mentioned a castle that the
(19:22):
false Maltezous had destroyed.
So if Vostitsa ever had a castlein the Frankish period.
It definitely has not survivedto the present day.
It hadn't survived by the late1600s when Çelebi was traveling
there.
Our next source of informationabout the town of Vostitsa is
(19:42):
from the Ottoman defter from1463.
In this first Ottoman defter ofthe Morea Vostitsa was among the
largest of towns that was inthis record.
But unlike some of those othertowns, Vostitsa was not divided
into neighborhoods.
So some of the large towns hadneighborhoods, Vostitsa did not
(20:04):
in this record.
Within the town, there were 159households that were taxed along
with 64 bachelors and 26 widows.
If we use a family size of about4.21 people, understanding that
people can't be partial, we geta number of around 760 people.
(20:24):
So a population around thatmaybe a little bit larger or
smaller for 1463.
Along with that we know from thedefter that there were vineyards
in the town, there were 85 olivetrees, 200 fruit trees.
This is interesting.
557 Mulberry trees, which werefor silk production.
(20:48):
The silkworms were fed onMulberry leaves.
There were also flax, wheat,barley, cotton.
There was a water mill in thetown.
And there were also salt pans.
It was along the coast.
And so there was salt productionin the town of Vostitsa.
And remember, this was right atthe end of the Byzantine period,
(21:11):
at the beginning of the Ottomanperiod.
So there were no mosques orother Turkish buildings there at
that time.
Our next account of the town ofVostitsa comes 200 years later,
and it's by the Ottoman travelerEvliya Çelebi that I read in
introduction to this episode.
(21:31):
Çelebi was visitingAigio/Vostitsa at the end of the
long 30 year war between theVenetians and the Ottomans in
which the Ottomans took controlof Crete.
And during that time, theVenetians had tried to attack
Ottoman holdings in thePeloponnese to try to draw them
off, which didn't work.
And so that's why Çelebi writesthat the Venetians had burned
(21:55):
and destroyed Aigio three timesto that point.
And Vostitsa, the town of Aigiowas still partially destroyed
when Çelebi visited.
So the only mosque standing wasthe one of stone by Sheik
Efendi, all other buildings, andmosques of that sort had been
(22:15):
burned.
The town still had an inn and ahamam.
The hamam being a bath house.
There were 40 small shops thatÇelebi saw.
And the town had 200 houses thatwere built of stone.
So it was still in place, eventhough there were signs of
(22:37):
destruction when Çelebi visited.
And of course Çelebi talkedabout the water that drained
from the eight stone spigots, sothe fountain.
Which will show up more and moreas Western Europeans start to
visit And then interesting, hetalks about an opium den, along
the coast, close by thefountain.
(22:58):
And this was a place, not justfor the opium den, but where
other people would come and eatand basically hang out, wash
their clothes, The nextinformation we have about the
town of Vostitsa, is theVenetian cadaster from 1700.
The cadaster itself dates 30years after Çelebi had visited
(23:20):
and it's halfway through the 30year Venetian period.
In addition to the actualwritten records of what and who
were in the town of Vostitsa,there's also a map of the town
itself And it provides somecomplimentary information, but
it doesn't show everything thatyou have in the written record.
(23:41):
So keep that in mind.
So I'm going to be talking aboutinformation from both the map
and the written cadaster aboutwhat Vostitsa was like in 1700.
Let's start with churches.
The cadaster says that there wasone newly constructed Latin
church, and this would have beenfor the Venetians themselves,
since they were not Orthodox.
(24:02):
There were also five Greekchurches in good repair.
And so these would be the fivechurches that the five
neighborhoods are centered on.
There was also one mosque in thetown, and this was probably
still the stone mosque of SheikEfendi that Çelebi had described
30 years earlier.
Of course the mosque probablywasn't in use during the
(24:26):
Venetian period.
It probably was used for otherthings at that point.
And the mosque does not show upon the map.
I also could not find the Latinchurch on the map either.
The five Greek churches and theneighborhoods are on there.
So let's talk about thoseneighborhoods.
There were five in number.
And each one was centered arounda church.
(24:48):
So the church of MadonnaFanaromeni had 140 houses.
The neighborhood of MichelArchangelo had 34 houses.
The neighborhood of St.
Zorzi had 118 houses.
St.
Anatasi neighborhood has 79houses and the neighborhood of
Madonna ton Xenon had 78 houses.
(25:11):
So the smallest at this pointwas Michel Archangelo with only
34 and the largest was MadonnaFanaromeni with 140 houses.
There were 454 total buildingsin Vostitsa in 1700.
That doesn't include otherinfrastructure, such as four
mills that were intact.
(25:33):
They also counted one mill thathad been destroyed and was still
in disrepair.
There was one bridge and there'salso one good fountain and six
destroyed fountains.
So interestingly, only onefountain use in the town.
Perhaps, the one that's down bythe coast, that had been in use
for a long time.
(25:53):
We have information about thepopulation of the town itself as
well from two different sources.
So there's 435 families listedin the Venetian cadaster from
1700.
There's another census record,by a Venetian official called
Grimani, also dating to 1700.
(26:14):
And he only recorded 383families.
So.
About 50 families, fewer thanthe cadaster had.
So using again, a family size ofaround 4.21 people, we get a
range of around 1,613 people to1,832.
(26:36):
So if you look at the plot ofpopulation through time, I
plotted it as 1,723, the averageof those two numbers.
Our next information aboutVostitsa comes from over 50
years later from RichardChandler, who was in Greece
during 1765 through 1766 andpublished a book Travels in
(26:56):
Greece in 1776.
And he mostly spent his timetalking about the plane tree and
the spring with little mentionof the town up above.
The plane tree and the springsare very common with the
traveler accounts that we havefrom people who were looking at
antiquities in Greece during theOttoman period.
(27:19):
There are many images of thelarge plane tree and the
fountains.
And I've posted some of those onthe companion page as well.
So you can see the variety ofthe ways that people depicted
Vostitsa.
And it's almost always the planetree and the fountains, or if
it's from a distance, it mighthave a little plane tree, but up
(27:39):
above the cliffs, you can seespires of churches.
So take a look at those on thecompanion page.
A few years later in 1799 therewas a visit by Pouqueville, the
French traveler.
He was not especially impressedwith the town.
Because he was looking forantiquities.
(27:59):
So the only thing he thought wasthere from antiquity was the
fountain.
So Pouqueville wasn't impressed.
He talked about the fountain.
He mentioned that they hadplaces to drink coffee beneath
the large plane tree.
And also that there were smallvessels at the port of Vostitsa
that loaded raw silk, cheese,currents, undried skins of oxen,
(28:22):
brandy, wines, and sardines.
And they would ship those thingsto the port of Patras, which is
further to the west.
And at Patras, these items wouldbe loaded into larger vessels
for Italy, according toPouqueville.
He also provided a drawing ofthe 12 fountains that you can
see on the companion page.
So shortly after that, ColonelMartin Leake, who was in the
(28:45):
British military, but veryinterested in antiquities,
visited in 1806.
He describes the town ofVostitsa as being on the hill,
separated from the water by acliff 50 feet high, which
definitely checks out.
Again, he talks about the largeplane tree shading the fountains
next to the small port.
So the thing that everybodytalks about.
(29:08):
He also talks about the currentsand other produce, which came
from all over the NorthernPeloponnese and shipped from
Vostitsa.
He mentioned the one mosque intown.
And that there were 30 Turkishfamilies and about three to 400
Greek families living inVostitsa at that time.
Among the Greek families weresome newly arrived from
(29:29):
Galaxidi, on the north shore ofthe Gulf of Corinth.
So just across the Gulf ofCorinth.
They had left their home ofGalaxidi duty due to problems
with Ali Pasha, who was fromIoannina and in charge of that
area.
So they came across the Gulf ofCorinth and they settled the
small area of land between themain part of town up above and
(29:51):
the cliff itself.
And that area is still known asthe Galaxidi in Aigio.
Leake was also interested inantiquities.
He saw more than Pouqueville.
He saw signs of ancientsettlement.
He saw pottery.
There were ancient graves.
Architectural fragments andbroken tiles.
And he noted spolia of columnsand base reliefs in both a
(30:15):
church and in a private home inAigio.
So there were pieces ofantiquity that were visible.
If not the large temples thatyou could still see in Athens
and other parts of Greece atthat time.
(30:36):
Leake visited in 1806.
11 years later in 1817, therewas that large earthquake that
damaged most of Aigio that Italked about a few episodes ago.
That report gives us some reallygood information about the
neighborhoods of Aigio, becauseit describes damage by
neighborhood.
(30:56):
To start with, there was aTurkish quarter, which had 62
houses, 52 shops and six ovens,which think of an oven as a
common oven where people wouldbake their bread.
Two important houses had beendamaged in the Turkish quarter,
as well as 33 of the housesinhabited by Turkish people.
So over half.
22 of the shops damaged, four ofthe ovens.
(31:18):
So a lot of damage.
Minor damage to 24 furtherhouses, 30 shops and only five
houses and two ovens and a Sufimonastic complex were undamaged.
The mosque itself, presumablythe one of stone was completely
destroyed.
So it did not make it throughthis earthquake.
(31:40):
In the neighborhood ofFanaromeni, there were 208 total
houses.
Over half of them, 112 wereseriously damaged, 73 could be
repaired, and 23 were undamaged.
The church of the blessed VirginMary, Fanaromeni, was also
undamaged by this earthquake.
The neighborhood of St MichaelArcangelo, which had 270 houses
(32:05):
total.
Of the 270, 218 were seriouslydamaged.
With only seven undamagedbuildings.
And the church itself was splitfrom the top to the bottom.
So a lot of damage in thatneighborhood.
The neighborhood of St Zorzi,there's no report, except that
(32:26):
there was a very old church andbelfry of St.
George, St.
Zorzi, which had been seriouslydamaged.
But no mention of houses orother buildings at all, except
for the church.
And that it was a very oldchurch.
In the neighborhood of Galaxidi,so those immigrants from the
north coast of the Gulf ofCorinth.
There were 69 houses total, onlythree were seriously damaged, 21
(32:50):
weren't touched at all, and 45could be repaired.
The last neighborhood was,Issodia or Madonna ton Xenon.
There were 83 houses total, ofwhich 82 were seriously damaged.
Only one house was undamaged andthe church was damaged as well.
So from this report on thedamage from the 1817 earthquake
(33:15):
note that the only thing in St.
Zorzi that neighborhood was thechurch.
And there's no mention of theneighborhood of St.
Atanasi at all.
This report from 1817 and theVenetian cadastral records from
1700 are the only two thatmentioned the number of
buildings per neighborhood.
And so I've plotted that outjust to see the change from 1700
(33:36):
to 1817.
And you can find that plot onthe companion page.
Shortly after that was the Greekrevolution.
There was definitely damage tothe town during that time.
But our next source ofinformation is from 1830, from
the Expedition Scientifique deMoree, the French expedition.
(33:59):
One of their reports was onarchitecture and antiquities.
And from that report, we knowthat there were both medieval
and ancient reliefs in the town.
And there was an inscriptionthat had been part of the church
of Eisodia Theotokou, which isalso known as Madonna ton Xenon,
so it changed names throughtime.
(34:19):
But there isn't much else aboutthe state of the town,
unfortunately, cause that wouldbe really interesting.
And after that, what I have arethe modern Greek censuses.
So 1879, there was a populationof 5,311.
And the population mostly goesup from there.
Except there's a dip between1907 and 1920 due to out
(34:40):
migration.
And then between 1920 and 1928,there's a huge increase in
population.
And that's probably immigrationdue to the population exchanges
at the end of the Balkan wars.
Greece and Turkey exchangedOrthodox and Muslim populations.
So there was a massive change inpopulation at that time.
(35:03):
This is all very interesting,but the information, that I have
from these reports doesn'tnecessarily tell me what
happened with Vostitsa.
The 1817 report of earthquakedamage by neighborhood is really
interesting, but it's reallygood to map out these things as
well.
There's a map from 1700 thatI've geo-referenced onto present
(35:26):
day satellite imagery, and itmatches the three churches that
still exist, and Ermou street.
Not much else as similar.
And so, the information aboutneighborhoods is interesting,
but I like to see maps.
I need to kind of see it inperson.
So I went looking for maps ofAigio, between 1700 and today,
just to get a better idea ofwhat was going on.
(35:48):
I ended up finding an 1836 map,that was published in a book.
And that map, interestinglyshows those three churches that
still exist, plus Agios Andreas,which I had taken pictures of in
June, 2022.
Agios Andreas is the church inGalaxidi, so that new part after
(36:10):
the immigration from the northcoast of the Gulf of Corinth.
It also has Ermou street.
So there's continuity betweenthe three churches and Ermou
street.
New information from the map arethe houses of Galaxidi and the
new church Agios Andreas.
Interesting enough though, thetown itself stops west of where
(36:32):
the neighborhoods of St.
Zorzi and St.
Atanasi were, the two missingones.
The town stops west of there.
And so that shows in 1700, thetown had shifted to the west
over the past 130 years afterdestruction from war and
earthquakes.
And of course there's moredestruction that happened with a
(36:53):
big earthquake in 1860s, thatfurther damaged different
churches and led to newneoclassical churches that were
built.
And so we know that.
The earth 1817 earthquakereport.
Didn't have a neighborhood for aSt.
And the only thing in St Zorziwas the very old church, because
(37:15):
the shuttle, the settlement hadshifted to the west.
Their neighborhoods had ceasedto exist by that time.
And now for some endnotes.
I want to mention that I did allof the georeferencing in the
qGIS geographical mappingsoftware.
All statistical analysis andplots were done using the Python
(37:37):
programming language.
The book that I got the 1836 mapfrom itself is very interesting.
The book title is urban planningand the Greek state 1833 through
1890.
It's by Dora Monioudi-Gavala andpublished in 2012.
The book is written in Greekwith English translations of
(37:59):
most of the text.
And it's super interesting.
When the Greek state wasestablished the reign of king
Otto.
So remember he was Bavarianwho's German.
He came in and he tried to makeGreece more like quote unquote
European countries.
There was a decree of 1835.
(38:20):
Entitled on the sanitaryconstruction of cities and
towns.
That roads were to be built onrectangular grid and oriented.
So all buildings receivesunlight.
This all sounds great.
The only problem withrectangular grids is it doesn't
take into account the topographyof the land.
Maybe you can't really do arectangular grid and it
(38:42):
definitely doesn't take intoaccount the older areas that
were constructed without a grid.
And so there was a map of a planfor Aigio that dated to 1835
that had a rectangular gridoverlaid on some of the newer
areas of Aigio There were partsof town west of the church of
Fanaromeni, which had been theWestern most area in the 1700
(39:07):
map.
And those areas have a regulargrid.
And you can see that in thestreet plan today.
Thanks for listening.
Email questions or comments todeepdive@helonaki.com or ask
them on the Helonaki Deep DiveFacebook page.
Show notes with links toresources mentioned in this
episode will be available athelonaki.com.
(39:29):
That's H E L O N A K i.com.
My thanks to Patreon supportersat the geospatial analyst level,
Janice and Jerry Farrell.
Your support keeps the Helonakideep dive going.
The Helonaki Deep Dive iswritten and produced by me, Jen
Glaubius of the Helonaki.
The theme music is Deep Ocean,instrumental by Dan o of dan o
(39:52):
songs.com, additional soundsfrom zap splat.com.
Thanks for listening.
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