On New Year's day 1980, the villagers of Kallio, dressed heavily for the bitter cold coming down to their plateau from the snowy Vardousia and Giona mountains around them, were standing at their porches, seeing the large plain around them swiftly and steadily getting filled with water.
The construction of Mornos dam, a ten-year project, had just been completed. The dam would turn this mountain basin into a huge artificial lake, for the water needs of the city of Athens. When the dam was put into operation, in those early days of 1980, the descending waters of the surrounding rivers and mountains were filling the basin at an alarming rate. Soon, Kallio would be transformed into a sunken ghost village.
As the level of the reservoir rose by almost 4 meters every day, one by one the houses, the central church of Panagia Evangelistria, the cemetery, the beautiful arched Venetian bridge in nearby Chania Velouchovo, the plane trees and oaks, and of course Kallio’s square, all began to disappear under the water. The spring of Vardousia that once gave life to the village, was now drowning it.
With them, all the excavations of the cemetery, the sanctuaries of the goddess Demeter, the theater, the agora, the buildings and the fortification of the ancient settlement of Kallipoli, which flourished in the 4th century BC on a central commercial street of the Aetolian Confederation, submerged at the bottom of the lake.
Before the end of the first week of 1980, the last remaining inhabitants of Kalliο left their paternal homes, emotionally - it was as if they were living inside a Raymond Chandler murder story, where the lady in the lake was their childhood memories and the murderers the residents piling up in the frantically constructed apartment blocks of Athens.
The 126-meter-high dam had completed its work and the artificial lake of Mornos had now formed, holding up to 600 million cubic meters of water. Since then, the water is transported to Athens through one of the largest aqueducts in Europe, 192 km long.
In the summers of extensive drought, the level of Lake Mornos lowers and the stone ghost of the lake emerges from the water: houses without roofs, with half-destroyed walls full of mud and oysters which, maybe symbolically, stay tightly grabbed from the houses’ stones.
Visiting Kallio
The only period that Kallio comes out of its water hiding place is summer, especially in August and especially if it has been preceded by a period of drought. You can visit the area freely. Above the lake’s shore, the inhabitants of Kallio built their new settlement, Neo Kallio. From there, you can follow the signs to the source of Kallio. Also, above the village is the Frankish castle of Velouchovo, on the ruins of the ancient Acropolis of Kallipoli.
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