The neighbourhoods of Ano Vitsa

The principle of wisdom of visiting names (Antisthenes). In other words, to know the origin of the word, etymological and semantic, in this case the history of the place-name.

Ano Vitsa was once the name of today's village "Monodendri". When what (formerly called Manadendri) was a separate community about two centuries ago, the middle mahalas (the middle neighborhood) as it was called in those years, took the name Ano Vitsa, where it is today and as it continues to be called.

So Ano Vitsa consists of four neighborhoods: Prosilio, Galina, Anaera and our Petinochori. In the neighborhoods of Ano Vitsa until a century ago, there were about 70 properties where almost 1,000 people lived. In Prosilio, which takes its name from the place where the sun sees it, where the sun's rays fall on it for a long time, there were about 40 properties. In Galina, which probably comes from the Vlach word for hen (it is also the main name in Russian, Galini), 18 properties are registered. Anaera, etymologically a point without sufficient air, but which already denotes light, elegance, gentleness, ethereal sense, delicacy, was next to and under the public road and had only three properties.

The following nine properties have been registered in Petinochori: Danatiko, Petsa, Kolovi, Spanios or Spania, Dasioula, Ziastou, Mimina, Bazakatiko, Amilko. Petinochori and Ano Vitsa in general were distinguished for the close relationship that people had with letters, they produced teachers, but also merchants who brought new knowledge and liberal ideas from abroad.

Around 1850, Dimitrios Giannis, son of the "ancestor" Georgios Giannis (born around 1800), "entered as a ward for the only daughter of Ano Vitsas’ Stefanou Spania, Eugenia" (My memoirs, Nikos Giannis, 23.8.1954.) Hence the older name of the property of Spanius or Spanias. Thus, the Giannis family enters from Monodendri in Vitsa and especially in Petinochori, in Ano Vitsa, while Eugenia Spania was an only child, her last name now has disappeared. Dimitris Giannis was the father of Konstantinos Giannis (whose father-in-law was Manthos Velogiannis from Prosilio Ano Vitsa, the first hotelier in Belgrade) and the grandfather of the teacher Nik. K. Giannis, the grandson of the latter Nikolaos Dim. Giannis.

The plan for the land beyond has been developed in this area since 2010. Beyond, a word of redemption, the prerequisite or even the unknown, something broader than knowledge or experience that we are always about to conquer, the search for a general theory of the world. Beyond life in the city, the ways that degrade the environment, destroy the climate, undermine our physical and mental health. Beyond the binding "sedentary” life of an old world filled with antiquated stereotypes. Beyond cheap competition and authoritative domination. Citizens of the World, Green Communities, Knowledge Center. Certainties divide people, diversity unites them.

Kostis Palamas.