Please click on the picture to be taken to the Kayakoy gallery

Kayakoy (Karmylassos) used to call Levissi for much of its history, this town of 3000 stone houses just beyond Hisaronu was deserted by its mostly Ottoman Greek inhabitants after World War I and the Turkish War of Independence. The League of Nations supervised an exchanged of populations between Turkey and Greece, with mostly Greek Muslims coming from Greece to Turkey, and most Ottoman Christians, moving to Greece. The people of Levissi, most of whom were Orthodox Christians, moved to the outskirts of Athens and founded Nea Levissi there. As there were far more Ottoman Greeks than Greek Muslims, many of towns vacated by the Ottoman Greeks were left unoccupied after the exchange of populations. Kayakoy, as it is called now, has only a handful of Turkish inhabitants. With the tourism boom of the 1987s, a development company wanted to restore Kayakoy’s stone houses and turn the holiday village. Scenting money, the local inhabitants were delighted, but Turkish artists and architectures were alarmed, and saw to it that the Ministry of Culture declared Kayakoy, a historical monument, safe from any unregulated development. There are now plans for careful restoration of the town, and its use as a venue for cultural presentations.

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Copyright David J. Krawczyk (c) 2005 2006.