Vathia - The towers of Mani

The most photographed Deep down, one of its most characteristic settlements Manis, stands out as it stands haughtily on top of an olive grove - flooded by two-storey and three-storey imposing Mani towers, the trademark of the area - overlooking the sea.

The towers of Vathia as well as in general towers of Mani They were built mainly during the 18th and 19th centuries, and experienced their greatest prosperity in the 19th century. During the period of the great flight of the inhabitants of the province after the Second World War to the big urban centers, the 800 towers of Mani were deserted, many collapsed, many endure lonely and persistent and few were saved and inhabited, like those of Vathia that after EOT intervention in the 1980s, were restored and converted into beautiful traditional hostels.

The towers of Mani are a peculiar category in Greece of popular architectural buildings. Although similar ones exist in other parts of the Balkans, their abundance and form in Mani are unique.

The reason for their existence in Mani is justified by the need to repel pirates, Turks and other invaders, but also by the very social system of patriarchy that prevailed in the region.

The tower was the seat and the symbol of power of every homeland and its height depended on the value of the family that owned it. Many times strong families did not allow others, less important, to build a tall tower and sometimes forced its lowering or demolition.

Each tower that belonged to a homeland protected not only the family, but the whole of you, who usually lived in the surrounding houses, and its reconstruction and guarding was the duty of the entire homeland.

Long-term bloody family rivalries (vendetta) resulted in the destruction of many towers, as the collapse of one tower usually signaled the collapse of family prestige.

However, apart from the towers that are built in various strategic points, narrow and passages, the private towers that exist in Mani, either individually or in sections creating settlements, with typical examples of villages Deep down, Look and Laws.

Construction the tower houses of Mani are stone buildings that reach a height of 20 meters and include 4 and 5 floors, with very small openings for windows and very low doors (for reasons of security and statics). The walls at their base were more than one meter thick and reached 50 points higher.

Monuments, buildings of a special type of social organization, tangible traces of a hard life in a wild place, but also imprints of a violent way of survival, the towers of Mani stand arrogantly lonely as if they want to remind us of the futility of human existence.