Sights - Lassithi Prefecture
Lassithi Plateau - Agios Georgios

 

The village of Agios Giorgios is situated between the Kefala hill and the highest peak of the Dikti mountains (2.148 m).

 

 

 
As the other villages on the plateau, also Agios Giorgios came into existence as a metochi - a small cluster of interim houses, where the land workers lived during the harvest time - in the period 1583-1630, after the Venetians had permitted Lassithi to be cultivated again. The village was mentioned the first time under the name of San Zorzi in Francesco Basilicata's report to Venice in 1630. He also mentions that it consisted of 10 houses.

 
Many of the inhabitants are still occupied with farming, and the daily shopping is done at the local supermarket or a couple of old grocery stores. The village is characterized by a relaxed atmosphere with kind people in the small coffeehouses.

 

                   

 

 
Among the sights must be mentioned the ethnographic museum. The museum is housed in two buildings. The oldest is an old farmhouse from the beginning of the 19th century which narrowly escaped being consumed by fire, when the Turks destroyed the village in 1866. At that occasion the inhabitant of the house Eleni Kasapena was burnt to death, and the smoke-blackened joists of the ceiling are still visible.

 

 
The museum is set up with great delicacy so that you really get the impression of being in a house as it appeared a couple of centuries ago. In the first room are  among other things an old loom, a bed (often built on top of the wine press) and an oven.

 

 

The room has entrances to the store room, the stable and the barn.

In a separate room, various old tools from local workmen are displayed for example a barber saloon, a smithy, a shoemaker

and an arrangement showing how new-woven fabric was softened (rasotrivio).

 

 
The neighbouring building is a beautiful neoclassical house where the interior from a well-to-do family's sitting room is displayed on the ground floor. On first floor are paintings by local artists, national costumes and various woven handworks. In the back building are uniforms, weapons and documents from World War I.

 

 
Further up the hill is a Venizelos museum. Venizelos himself never visited Agios Giorgos, but as the ethnographic museum is a popular excursion destination to many schools, the village thought it would be a clever idea to also establish a museum for one of modern Greece's greatest politicians.

 

 
The museum, situated in a stone-building from 1873, contains photographic material and historic documents, displaying the life of Eleftherios Venizelos from his birth in Mournies at Chania, his political carrier from the appointment as minister of justice under Kritiki Politeia, the Theriso rebellion in 1905 and his appointment as prime minister in Athens, up to his death in France in 1905 and his funeral on the Profitis Ilias hill outside Chania.

A kilometre outside the village towards Agios Konstantinos is a red lime washed church.

In this place stood earlier the Venetian's granary Moros, where the tenants of the land had to deliver a part of their harvest to the authorities as rent for the state-owned fields. Only scattered remains of the foundation are visible today.

 

 

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