An Insignificant Small Town — Monemvasia after the Liberation of 1821

The Greek War of Independence, which began in 1821, saw Monemvasia attain a certain importance in the history of the emerging Greek nation. This "sacred rock" of the Byzantine Empire was the first fortification that the Turks had to surrender. In the summer of 1821, the Turkish garrison on Monemvasia capitulated, after a four month siege had forced it to use up all the provisions. Ultimately, it was the threat of starvation that forced the Turks to give up. The Greek national heroin, Laskarina Bouboulina, took part in the siege. While war was still raging on all sides, the first assembly to confer on the reorganization of a free Greece met at Monemvasia.

Some of the Greek families that fled to Spetsai, Hydra, Aegina, or to other islands, returned to their home town after the liberation. New settlers also came from Crete. These included the Kapuzini and Ritsos families. As successors to the medieval and early modern archons, these families numbered among the leaders of Monemvasia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, they were no longer merchants with commercial contacts throughout the Mediterranean. Rather, they possessed extensiv mainland estates, farmed by dependent laborers. The social condition of these farm workers did not begin to improve until the 1930s. Those who did not belong to the leading families either fished or engaged in small scale farming for their own consumption. The production of trousers worn by the residents of the islands provided a living for a few more families.

During the entire nineteenth and more or less all of the twentieth century Monemvasia remained an insignificant, small, country town, which did not even have regular ship connections. Banks, drug stores, and even the regional government moved out of town. Today the town does not even have the courts that it had in the nineteenth century, and the high school that formerly existed, reopened on the mainland at Yephira only in 1977. And despite a slight improvement in the infrastructure (note the road to Sparta), residents are still emigrating from Monemvasia just as they are from elsewhere in Greece. In 1858 the city reached its largest population size since independence — 129 families and 646 residents. In 1911 the last resident moved off of the plateau of the rock, which, since then has become nothing more than an expanse of ruins.

The Greek demographic statistic from 1971 recorded Monemvasia's low mark in population development with 32 inhabitants in the old town. The beginning reconstruction of the lower town as well as the settlement of foreigners and of Greeks from Athens and other parts of the country turned the trend in another direction: the 1991 census shows 75 persons living permanently in the old town. Migration from surrounding villages affected the population of the community of Monemvasia, which consists besides the old town on the rock of the new settlement of Yephira on the mainland and the village of Hagia Kiriaki. Whereas in 1971 445 people lived in this community their number grew to 869 in 1991. Especially Yephira was able to profit from this rural exodus: its population grew from 344 in 1961 to 380 ten years later, and the demographic statistic from 1991 recorded 767 inhabitants. That means that nowadays 90 percent of the population of the community of Monemvasia live in Yephira.

In the year 1999 the ten neighbouring villages of Hagia Paraskevi, Nomia, Hagios Stephanos, Futia, Hagios Phokas, Velies, Hagios Dimitrios, Hagios Nicholaos and Daimonia together with Yephira, Hagia Kiriaki and the ancient town on the rock itself were credited as a new administrative unit, the Dimos of Monemvasia. Thus Monemvasia reached a goal she had worked for for many years, and in the new millenium the town found back to the old administrative boarders she used to have in former centuries.

Nevertheless it is only during the few months of the annual tourist season when the restaurants and cafes of Yephira overflow with colorful crowds of international tourists, and for some hours during these days Monemvasia seems to be completely in the hands of these travellers. They fill the narrow passages and stroll about the main street. And when the new, foreign owners of the patrician houses and palaces moor their yachts in the bay, can we forget that we are in a sleepy, nearly forgotten town, seemingly at the end of the world.