Villages of Mykonos

Her villages Mykonos they called them rural housing which were scattered in the Mykonian landscape. Built between the rounded gray rocks (so as not to take up vital space on the farm), and belted by dry stones and prickly pears, they were the typical autonomous unit of agricultural production, as was the case in other Cycladic islands, having the same structure but different  "Houses" in Paros or “themonias” in Folegandros. In the center of the village are the rooms where the people lived, usually in a C or P shape, describing a paved courtyard, usually covered by an arbor.

The kitchen, with the walk - a horizontal board where the cheeses rested so that the mice would not approach them -, the wood oven, the kitchens, the laundry, the windows (recesses like windows in the walls where they placed food and utensils), the jaws (two tiny openings above the windows - one to the north and one to the south - through which the air passed and cooled the space) was the kingdom of Mykoniatissa. Next to it, the barn, the warehouse with the agricultural tools, the stables (the stables) or cells for the living, for the donkey, for the pig (pig herd), for the cows (voidokelli), the dovecote, the troughs for the watering the animals, sometimes the press, the manganese and the threshing floor. Most of the time, the chapel would be located, which differed from the other buildings of the cluster thanks to its tile dome. In fenced courtyards made of dry stone, the pig was fed, which before Christmas would be slaughtered in pig carcasses to offer to the household, the louzes, the children, the sausages. The pervolaki with the vegetables, the vineyard, while the calves would graze in any adjacent order (barren fields for grazing).

The villages with the incomparable folk architecture with the marriage of the gray of the rocks, with the whitewashed plastic volumes of the buildings, the green of the prickly pears, the vine and the arbor, were the landmarks of rural Mykonos, remnants but also symbols of another culture, the culture of the poor imaginativeness of misery.

Nowadays, where the landscape of Mykonos has been flooded by villas and maisonettes, the few remaining villages and one can see, stand there willing to declare with their presence the values ​​of moderation and humility.