Mytilene Mansions

What makes her Mytilene to stand out from any other city in Greece are the mansions of. With different architectural style each mansion -most inside beautiful gardensReveal in the best way the Mytilene of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Mytilene of the industrial revolution. The city that supplied the markets of Europe with first quality oil, that sent its nutmeg soaps to the elegant French women of the salons, that covered with its industrial soaps the needs of the rising wind industry, that its ships dominated the sea, that ouzo conquered the world…

In these houses in Sourada, in Key, In Makry Gialos and in Kiosk, lived the merchants, industrialists and shipowners of the time.

Their trade with the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Egypt, and Europe did not bring Lesvos not only money, but also cultural influences, which were reflected in their mansions, factories and industrial buildings, but also in the way of life, in the letters, in the arts, but also in the social organization.

The urban dwellings built after 1850 are not a continuation of the architectural model of the Ottoman Empire or of the urban tower house as it evolved from the 18th to the 19th century.

Instead they are characterized by an openness to European standards and, while the tower houses covering mainly functional needs, the mansions were a way of displaying the wealth accumulated by trade and shipping. But the mansions were, above all, houses inhabited by lords, by a cosmopolitan bourgeoisie that produced wealth (production, trade, shipping, banks) mingled with the whole world.

The mansions are affected by different rhythms. In the first phase they are influenced by the Bavarian neoclassicism and the baroque rhythm, or of the Second Empire, and are characterized by symmetry and austerity that gave a grandeur to the houses, so that they are justified "Urban mansions".

The next type acquires free shapes, interpenetration of the volumes, strong inclination of the roof, and an asymmetry that expressed the picturesque style.

Many of the mansions of Mytilene They are well-preserved and so one can admire the frescoes, the wood-carved ceilings, the plaster panels, the French-style furniture in the style of Louis XV 15th and 16th, the paintings, but mainly to meet the last real lords.