Sea Melody

Studios Apartments Karpathos

Customs and manners, alive and undefiled...

On this island, time seems to have stopped - an authentic Greece, as if from a bygone era: Women who dress daily in traditional costumes. Fields that are still harvested with a scythe. Feasts with lyres and tsambounes, where men and women sit separately. Unique, strange customs are still faithfully followed in the North of Karpathos. The festivals are unparalleled in the Aegean.

Olympus, due to its geographical isolation, presents great cultural peculiarities in relation to the so-called "Lower Villages", from which it differs in terms of economic and social development. Thus, on Mount Olympus, peculiar customs have been preserved, the archaic language idiom and the traditional costume, which is still worn today by the elderly (and not only) women of the village.

Olympus is also known for its great musical tradition and famous festivities. On the occasion of events such as festivals, weddings and name days, the locals celebrate with the local purposes of the pear-shaped Dodecanese lyre, the tsambouna and the lute.

The "revelers" adapt improvised couplets differently each time in iambic fifteen-syllable verse, the mantinades, with themes taken from the occasion of the feast (eg wishes to the bride and groom), everyday life and topicality.

They often acquire an interactive form that gives the party special interest. Only men participate in the party, while women watch from a distance. The most important festivals on Mount Olympus take place on the 15th of August, when the church of the "Assumption of the Virgin" celebrates, lasting three days, and on the 29th of August of St. John in Vroukounta, when the inhabitants of the settlement and other Carpathians go to the impressive the temple and spend the night in the countryside.

The sardine - the well-known Spotted salted menoula, the capers, the barley, the salted and swimmed small elixirs, the manouli, the bread, the rolls, and the Carpathian wine, precede the macaroni, the fried or the yarrow, the agar, the agr wedding food and Carpathian baklava.

The sesame honey, the triangles, the drywalls...
The many learned pies (cabbage pies, onion pies and gingerbread) but also the once small wedding buns, today a daily "gleoudi", are also samples of the taste and patience of the Carpathian housewife.

Also examples of the meticulousness of the artistic concern of the Carpathians and his dedication to the traditional professions, are the wood carvings, iconostasis, sofas, benches, furniture, but also the handmade shoes (stilia, slippers) that are fortunately still preserved (mainly) in Olympos.