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The Kastro at Chora on Kalymnos and its conservation

• Παπαβασιλείου, Ελένη Κ.
• Καραμπάτσος, Βασ.

Kalymnos is the fifth largest island in the Dodecanese and lies a mere 14 miles from the Asia Minor coast opposite. The written sources in the early centuries AD have nothing to say about the island, until the 12th cent., when there are a number of references in the traveller ΑΓΙ- drisi and in two documents on Patmos dating to 1254 and 1263. In the second half of the 13th and early 14th cent, the island suffered raids by the Genoese, Turks and Venetians. In 1309 it was subjected to the authority of the Order of the Knights of St. John in Jerusalem, along with the rest of the Dodecanese. In 1522 it was ceded by the Knights to the Turks as part of a peace treaty, and remained under Turkish sovereignty until 1912, when the period of Italian rule began. In 1947 it was incorporated into the rest of Greece.After a brief summary of the island’s history, reference is made to the large fortress, or Paleo- chora, which is built on a rocky eminence on mount Profitis Ilias. It has a fortification wall with rectangular towers at intervals, while the interior is encircled by a narrow wallwalk. The masonry of both the enceinte and the houses consists of small, undressed blocks of hard limestone. The ascent from Chora is by a series of steps leading to a monumental gate that was abandoned, probably, during the period of Turkish rule, when a second gate was opened further to the north. Inside the Kastro are preserved several houses in a ruined condition, water cisterns, storage rooms (silos), an oilpress and nine late-Byzantine churches, with a few wall-paintings, in a fairly good state of preservation.The coats of arms, with the dates 1514 and 1519, the form of the battlements, which have the shape of a double ’shallow-tail’, and information recorded in documents in the Malta National Library, suggest that from the late 15th cent, to the early decades of the 16th, there was intense building activity in the Kastro. One problem that arises, however, is that it is not clear which Kastro is meant in the statements about this building activity. We believe that one document, of 1445, refers to the Kastro of Chrysocheria and the other two, of 1495. to the Great Kastro of Chora.There has, so far, been no systematic investigation or study of the Kastro. Taking into account that there was a tendency in the 11th cent, to occupy naturally strong positions, we may suggest that the original nucleus of this fortress was built in the Byzantine period, and was given the form in which it is preserved today mainly during the period of the Knights (1309-1522). There were also many modifications and additions to the Kastro during the Turkish period. The life of the settlement began to decline in the 18th cent, and was transferred to Chora, in the foothills near the fortress.Conservation work on the fortifications and the churches began in 1991, as part of the programme of the Ministry of the Aegean to ‘promote sites of acknowledged archaeological and cultural interest in the region of the south-east Aegean’; this work still continues.

• History and Archaeology

• Αρχαιολογία
• Architecture

Η πρώτη μορφή αυτού του άρθρου παρουσιάστηκε στην επιστημονική συνάντηση στη Μυτιλήνη το Νοέμβριο του 1991 με τον τίτλο: "Διαμόρφωση Κάστρου Χώρας Κάλυμνου". Η παρούσα μελέτη αποτελεί μια πρώτη προσέγγιση των προβλημάτων των σχετικών με την αρχιτεκτονική μορφή και δομή του οχυρωμένου οικισμού, καθώς και τη χρονολόγησή του. Οι υπογραφόμενοι ευχαριστούν τον Προϊστάμενο της 4ης Εφορείας Βυζαντινών Αρχαιοτήτων Δωδεκανήσου Η. Κόλλια για την άδεια μελέτης και δημοσίευσης. Ευχαριστούν, επίσης, τους συναδέλφους αρχαιολόγους Θ. Αρχοντόπουλο, Α. Κατσιώτη και Α.Μ. Κάσδαγλη για τη βοήθειά τους., Περιέχει 4 σχέδια, Το άρθρο περιέχεται στο τεύχος: Μέρος Α'-Μελέτες