Ghost village!

This post is about a ghost village that I come across when I was visiting Tílos, a small island in Greece. Tilos is part of the Dodecanese group of islands at the Aegean Sea and it lies between Kos and Rhodes.

The name of the place I am about to describe is mikro chorio and it means small village. It was named small not because of it’s size but for the small holdings owned by the inhabitants. And yet that small piece of land fed 200 families till the end of world war II.

After the war people started to migrate or move to the island’s port to make a new village called Livadia that means flatland. The proximity to the sea that used to identify with the danger of pirates become the land of opportunity!

In 1962 the residents were 32 and in 1965 just one!
It is said that in their way to the new village they took with them the roofs, the doors and the windows in order to place them to their new houses.

The first ones to move were the storekeepers and inevitably the rest of the inhabitants followed. All those wonderful stone built houses were left to decadence into piles of stones randomly scattered around the village.

Now trees and local vegetation are claiming the land that was taken from them hundreds of years ago since the oldest buildings are dating back to the 14th century.

At some houses it is curved the date of construction while on some others the names of the owners are painted on the decaying walls, maybe with the hope that in the future they might return.

Walking around the streets of this non-village is a unique experience. The screaming silence, the deafening absence, the unreality that surrounded me will never be forgotten!

All the pictures were taken by me with my good old Canon EOS 20D with a Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens attached.

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