Museums & Tradition
Open-Air Water Power Museum
The Open-Air Water Power Museum, in Dimitsana (Peloponnese), highlights the importance of water-power in traditional society. Focusing on the main pre-industrial techniques that take advantage of water to produce a variety of goods, it links them to the history and daily life of the local society over the ages.
What is on display?
The Open-Air Water Power Museum has restored traditional installations and water-powered mechanisms. The workshops are surrounded by thick vegetation and abundant running water, where you can go for a walk. Their permanent equipment has been repaired so that it is now in working order
The first building houses a water mill and a flour mill with a horizontal impeller. In the next little room, with the fireplace, lived the miller with his family, usually large.
Outside the mill you will see a rakokazano, which stood in the open air after the harvest, for the production of tsipouro from the grapes.
Directly opposite, a two-story building housed the residence of the tanner (above) and the tannery (below). The interior of the laboratory is divided into zones that correspond to the various stages of leather processing.
The stone pavement leads to a plateau, where a natural reservoir is formed, and ends at the gunpowder mill. Gunpowder, a strong element of the region's cultural identity, is kept alive in the memory and narratives of its inhabitants. During the Revolution of 1821, the Dimitsanites supplied the struggle with this necessary war material. Kolokotronis characteristically writes: "We had gunpowder, Dimitjana was making". Here you can see the moving mechanism of a gunpowder mill with pestles, which had disappeared in Europe already in the 18th century, while in Dimitsana it was used during the Revolution, but also until the beginning of the 20th century.
After your visit here, continue your tour to Lousios Gorge.
Mainalo Forest History Museum
In 1939, the logging factory was built in Chrysovitsi, Arcadia, one of the first in Greece, where the Forestry Museum of Mainalos is housed today. It is a place that traces the first steps of the industrial revolution in the Arcadian area and at the same time highlights the importance of the great mountain in the history of the place.
War Museum of Tripolis
Open the entire Year
The War Museum of Tripoli is housed in the square of Agios Vassiliou and at the corner with Ethnomartyron Street, occupying the ground floor of the house of Ioannis Malliaropoulos.
It was inaugurated in 2000 responding to the need and demand of the city of Struggle and Revolution. It mainly includes exhibits from the struggle of 1821, as well as the war of 1940.
It has eleven sections covering thematically the struggles of the Greeks: weapons and evidence from the revolution of 1821, the Greco-Turkish War, the Macedonian Struggle to the Middle East and the Liberation .
The halls of the museum house a bust of Kolokotronis as well as a large cast of monuments praising General Th. Kolokotronis, while the gunpowder-smoked rifles and authentic swords are awe-inspiring.
In the halls of the War Museum and in its collections, one sees in relief the history of this Tripoli and of all of Arcadia.
General Kolokotronis Museum in Historic Limbovisi
Open the entire Year
In Limbovisi, the village of the Kolokotronians, near Chrysovitsi and Piana, the house of Th. Kolokotronis has been reconstructed at the expense of the Arcada businessman P. Angelopoulos. The house is stone built, according to the standards of the past. Right next to it are the ruins of the old house. The surrounding area is shaped into a small park. Today the house functions as a museum and hosts contemporary pictorial material from the life and activities of Th. Kolokotronis.
The house of the Kolokotronians in Limbovisi, center and stronghold of the glorious generation, was located in a central part of the village near the church of Ai-Yiannis.
According to historical information, the house was destroyed in 1770-71, when the Albanians crossed the Morea by <>, suppressing the Peloponnesian rebellion against the Orlovians.
Mikis Theodorakis Zatouna International Museum
Open the entire Year
"The Museum" was created in order to honor the musician, the composer, the man who loved Zatouna, the Zatounites and all Greeks, Mikis Theodorakis.
It is housed in the old stone Primary School of Zatuna, where the young students learned their first letters, read their first words and dreamed about life
The school is located in the central square, opposite the stone-built Church of the Assumption (Panagia Elovitissa), which was built in 1853.
At the same time, the Museum aims to preserve the symbolism inherent in Zatuna, the exile, the displaced, although imprisoned, still thinks freely, is inspired and creates monumental works, which keep the message of freedom unquenchable, passing it on to the next generations and motivate them to fruitful interventions in the important social issues of our time.
Traditional and folklore museum of Piana
Open the entire Year
Just above the square of the village of Piana is a Folklore Collection which operates under the care of the local cultural association.
On the ground floor of an old house, which formerly served as a warehouse, various items of folk life as well as ecclesiastical objects are elegantly displayed.
Collection operated under the care of the local cultural association. On the ground floor of an old house, which formerly served as a warehouse, various items of folk life as well as ecclesiastical objects are elegantly displayed. The Museum gives the visitor a representative picture of family, rural and professional life of the past. In one section it includes objects and tools of daily life and traditional crops: loom, household items, sofra, jars, plough, clothing, etc. In a separate section, ecclesiastical utensils, popular, Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons, manuals, weapons and seals are exhibited.