145-160

The complex of healing spa courtgibad in Lesvos

• Τσιτιμάκη, Μαρία

The businessman from Istanbul P. M. Kourtzis (close collaborator of G.Zarifes) undertook a groundbreaking enterprise in the field of healing tourism in his birthplace, Lesvos, at the end of the 1 9 t n century. It consists of a hotel offering high quality services, at least compared with the standards of the Near East: a spa of European standards, installations for electrotherapy, sports grounds and two hotels, namely Electric and the luxurious Radium Palace. According to the data collected up to this point in the course of this brief research, it has been clear that the Lesvian businessman had a careful and gradual approach to this matter. It is impressive t h a t in the first stages the enterprise starts with the creation of the spa and the small hotel Electric with the electrotherapy installations. Its character addresses the middle class strata of the local society of the island. The architecture of these buildings has a practical focus, whereas it incorporates traditional forms, particularly in the spa area. The façade οι hotel Electric shows traces of neoclassical influence. Soon, the plans for a new luxurious hotel, called the Radium Palace, would start being designed by the Smyrniote architect Ignatius Vafeiades. It bears morphological elements of the eclectic style in the ambience of the French "Second Empire'''' marked by the rich ornate elements. The particular style was more acceptable in the big cities of the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul, Smyrna) and less so in Mytilene. This choice apparently aimed more to a clientele outside of Lesvos, but it also makes a contrast to the nearby —and equally luxuriousSari Uica Palace in Thermi, built according to the precepts of Orientalism. The political developments of the first decades of the 2 0 t n centur y introduced Lesvos in a new territorial and political regime. The cosmopolitan atmosphere of contact with the large cities of the Ottoman Turkey, of Egypt and Europe, gradually receded and was replaced by the heavy atmosphere caused by the refugees which flooded this big island of the marginal space. The destruction of the Radium Palace hotel during the war in 1914 was just one more sad event in t h a t u n s t a b l e period. The decline of Courtgibad is immediately connected to the political and economical choices of the Kourtzis family. The political orientation of P. M. Kourtzis, who was consul to Germany and supporter of the political line of the king Constantine I, in a proVenizelos island such as Lesvos, led the family to political and social isolation. Simultaneously the entrepreneurial activity of the Kourtzis family followed a declining course after the final bankruptcy of its last company, which led to the mortgaging of the largest part of its assets.

• History and Archaeology

• Ιστορία

Θερμά ευχαριστώ το φίλο ιστορικό κύριο Στρατή Αναγνώστου για την παραχώρηση τον αρχειακού υλικού, των απομνημονευμάτων τον Π. Μ. Κουρτζή, όπως και δικών του υπό δημοσίευση άρθρων., Περιλαμβάνει εικόνες των λουτρών στο τέλος του άρθρου