FEATURE
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The Campanile of St George of The Greeks, Venice The development of religious liberty made it possible for Greek refugees and mercenaries serving in the Venetian forces to
built their own church in Venice. Construction work started in 1539. Almost 40 years and 15.000 ducats later it was finished, The Campanile of St. George and the Campo dei Greci now belong to
the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post Byzantine Studies to which it was donated by the Greek Community of Venice in 1953. In the 2000s serious restoration work was needed and this was achieved in a collaborative effort between the Hellenic Institute of Venice, local Venetian specialists and Elliniki Etairia with Charis and Alexandros Kalligas as architect coordinators.
And the work continues…
Keos Kea – The square Ancient (Fourth Century BC) Tower of Ayia Marina at one point still stands almost twenty metres high. In fact, having been incorporated into a monastery, it did not begin to fall into decay until the mid nineteenth century. In the later twentieth and the first decade of our own century however its total ruin appeared certain as, despite warnings by the responsible archaeologist, large sections fell to the ground. Elliniki Etairia organized major fundraising
campaigns twice to save the monument, first for a study of the scaffolding necessary –which was prepared by Kostas Zambasto prevent its collapse and then for its installation. Today its restoration by the Archaeological Service with European funds is proceeding apace. Without the enthusiasm of many members of Elliniki Etairia and the generosity of many donors however, including local inhabitants, artists who contributed paintings for an auction, businessmen descended from Kea like Costa Gleoudis and repeated benefactors of conservation causes, such as Thanassis and Marina Martinos and Haris Leventis, it would not have proven possible to save one of the most important monuments of agricultural fortification to have come down to us from antiquity.
As we go to press two more important restorations are proceeding, one of the wonderful twelfth century Church of St. Peter and St Paul in Kastania, a small town in the southern Peloponnese –the architect restorer is Stavros Mamaloukos, the donor Thanassis and Marina Martinos- the other a minute church in a remote region of Naxos that contains extremely rare ninth century frescoes. This project was begun by the Association Hagia Kyriaki Naxos in Switzerland with the support of the Kostopoulos Foundation and Theofilos Priovolos and with Professor Iannis Kyzis and Klimis Aslanides as architects. The Council for the Architectural Heritage of Elliniki Etairia, under the chairmanship of Pavlos Kremezis, has succeeded in energizing the project through collaborative funding by the A.G. Leventis Foundation and Thanassis Martinos.