Traditional villages

 

Dimitsana
(106.38 km – approx. 1 hr and 50 mins from Katakolon)

Dimitsana is built amphitheatrically in the deep cleft between two steep hills above the Lousios River. From outside the town, it is easy to pick out the bell towers of churches and pinpoint individual four and five-storey stone houses, with their narrow windows and red-tiled roofs. In 1998 Greece’s first museum of preindustrial technology, the Dimitsana Open-Air Water Power Museum opened just outside the town on the road to Stemnitsa.

The museum has a restored tannery, a rakistill, flour and powder mills and sign-posted routes to other nearby mills. When the museum’s 2 mills are operating, visitors get an idea of how noisy this now quiet valley was, before electric power made the mills obsolete.

If you’re continueing your journey to the village of Stemnitsa, make sure to visit the Monastery of John the Baptist which is located between the villages of Stemnitsa and Dimitsana, down by the ravine of the river Lousios. It’s well worth it!