Arta Bridge

The stone bridge of Arta is the most famous in Greece and this is due to the legend of the "sacrifice of the master builder's wife", which the folk muse made a song.

The original construction of the bridge is placed in the years of classical Amrakia during the reign of King Pyrrhus I, king of Epirus. Its current form, the Bridge of Arta acquired the years 1602-1606 AD. The year 1881, when the Arta, the bridge was the border of free Greece with the Ottoman Empire.

The two-storey neoclassical building at the western end of the bridge, built in 1864 by an Austrian architect and today houses the Arta Bridge Folklore Museum, was first used as an Ottoman outpost of the Bridge and later, after the year 1881, as a border station, customs of the Turks.

The current length of the stone bridge of Arta reaches 145 m., And the four arches have no symmetry between them.

At the Folklore Museum There are timeless photographs of Arachthos, but also interesting scenes from professions and images of old Arta.

The poem that became a song is one of the most famous and moving songs of our folk poetry:

Forty-five carpenters and sixty apprentices
giofyri they founded the river in Arta.
They built it all day, at night it was hanging.
The carpenters mourn and the students cry:
"Woe to our efforts, a pity to our work,
all day long to build the night to be demolished. ”

A little bird crossed and sat facing the river,
he did not cry like a bird, he did not swallow like a swallow,
despite crying and saying human idiot:
"If you do not haunt a man, a geyser does not land,
and do not haunt an orphan, a stranger, a passerby,
despite the master builder the beautiful woman,
which comes late and I take the yoma. ”

The master builder hears you and death falls.
He catches, sucks the nightingale with the nightingale bird:
Slowly get dressed, slowly change, slowly go to bed,
slowly go and cross the geyser of Arta.
And the bird disobeyed and otherwise went and said:
"Get dressed quickly, change quickly, go to the gym quickly,
to go quickly and cross the geyser of Arta. ”

To see her and disappear from the white army.
The master builder saw it, his heart broke.
He greets them from afar and says to them from near:
"Hello, your joy, carpenters and you students,
but what does the master builder have and is he barbaric?
"The ring fell on the arch first,
and who should enter, and who should go out, to find the ring? ”
"Master, do not be upset if I go and get it,
me to go in, and I to go out, to find the ring. ”
Zero went down well, zero went in the middle,
"Pull, good with the chain, pull the chain
I raised the whole world and I did not find anything. ”

One coagulates with the trowel and another with the lime,
the master builder also takes it and throws a large stone.
"Alas for our fate, a pity for our radical!
We were three sisters, all three misspelled,
one built the Danube, and the other the Euphrates
and I, the most stern of Arta, the geyser.
As the walnut leaf trembles, the geyser trembles,
and as the leaves fall, let the passers-by fall. ”

"Daughter, change the word and give another curse,
You have an only brother, do not miss and pass. ”
And this reason changed and gives another curse:
"If the wild mountains tremble, let the geyser tremble,
and if the wild birds fall, let the passers-by fall,
what I have a brother abroad, do not miss and pass. ”