KAMPOS
THE NAME OF THE ORCHARD

The Kampos of Chios, an inhabited wood of citrus trees, is that part of Greece whose name is a byword for the concept of the "perivoli", the garden estate or orchard. In this garden, behind high boundary walls, and behind gates that shelter one from the gaze of the passer-by, are hidden the mansions of the Kampos. They are distinctive buildings, built in centuries past by the flourishing members of the diaspora from Chios, anxious to maintain their ties with the island. It is for just these features that the Kampos was declared a historic area in 1990 by ministerial decree, and a traditional settlement by presidential decree in 1992. The first of these decrees described the district as 'an elastic agricultural ensemble unique in the Greek area, one where there is a harmonious symbiosis of houses and farming activities, on some two hundred localized estates surrounded by high ornamental boundary walls.' It went on: 'The corresponding estate mansions are fine specimens of works of art, both as a whole and their detailed elements of form and architecture, which are of the highest architectural importance. There are the same number of auxiliary buildings, elaborate pebbled courtyards, pergolas, windlass wells, orchards of citrus fruit, and irrigation systems, remarkable for their time, embellished with sculpture. Thus they are a living source of information, from the fourteenth century to the present, about the society of Chios and its political, economic and cultural structure.' It is this district that we endeavour to highlight in the collector's edition Kampos - the name of the orchard. The texts have been specially written by the educationalist Giorgos Mastorakis, the architects Manolis Vournous, Giorgos Kallergis and Giorgos Pashalidis, the painter Giorgos Moutsatsos, the art conservation expert Vasilis Agiannidis, and the historian loli Vingopoulou, with translation by the Hellenist Dr Richard Witt. All these are scholars who know the region well and are fighting to save it. Such is also the aim of MILITOS Editions in the present volume, the second in a series about the history and traditions of places in Greece, launched in 2006 with the plate book "Nyphaion - the name of a fairytale". (from the publisher)