Kalav
ryta is a small town high up in the Peloponnese in Greece. In winter it’s a ski resort.
5 Kilometres from Kalavryta is the monastery where, in 1821, some monks declared independence from Turkey and the Greek war of independence began. Now you know what monasteries are for.
Greece was occupied again during the Second World War. On 13th December 1943 the German occupiers, rightly suspecting that Kalavryta was a centre of resistance, locked all the women and children in the school and took the men and boys to a nearby hillside. They shot all the men and boys and set fire to the village. In the process the school caught fire. The women and children burst out of the school to find the whole village destroyed.
The war memorial, on the spot where the killings took place. The writing says ‘No more wars’ and ‘Peace’
Statue commemorating how the women and children had to drag the bodies of the men to bury them.
The other interesting thing about Kalavryta is the toothed railway, so called because there are teeth on the line to engage cog wheels where the descent is steep.