Megisti Island Greece
Megisti Island History
In ancient times the historic island of Kastellorizo was named Megisti from its first settler Megisteas. The island has been inhabited since the ancient times and this is proved by various findings such as neolithic tools, tombs, a gold wreth from the mycenean period, inscriptions and other findings.
Ruins of the temple of Apollo Megisteas whose worship was spread all over the island and on the neighboring Asia Minor coastline, were found.
The Dorians who settled on Kastellorizo built a fortified acropolis on the location where Palaiokastro lies today, and there are some ruins still apparent today. Kastellorizo participated in the Trojan war along with the other islands of the Dodecanese complex and being allied to Athens, it helped Athens in the war against the Persians.
Kastellorizo passed to the possession of Romans and then it was captured by the Byzantines to end up to the rule of the Knights of St. John or Rhodes in 1306. Since then, Megisti island changes its name to the foreign word Kastellorizo which derives from the words Castello-Rosso, because of the red-coloured high rocks on which the castle is built. From 1440 until 1522 the island is conquered by Egyptians, Franks and the Turks at last.
In 1659, it is conquered by the Ventians, but the Turks take the island back unti July 1788 when the heroic "sea eagle" Lambro Katsonis attacked the Turks and freed the island. During that period of time the merchant fleet of Kastellorizo island had a prominent place among the merchant shipping of the Dodecanese islands complex. Following the Independence Revolution of 1821, Greece was freed from the Turkish occupacy. However in 1830 the London Protocol provided that the Dodecanese islands should be placed under Turkish dominion again. Kastellorizo resigned to its fate but did not lose its shipping dynamism. On the contrary, it not only prospered in merchant and shipping business, but made a remarkable progress in literature as well.
It was then that famous schools were founded, such as the Sandrapeia School (of the benefactor Lucas Sandrapes) where literacy and education were given to many generations.
Magnificent churches were built, with rich iconography and sumptuous icon screens, such as teh cathedral of St. Constantine and St.
Kastellorizo island had around 12-14,000 inhabitants, most of which were sea men. In March 1913, when the Kastellorizo inhabitants saw that the Greek fleet was taking rule over most of the islands of the Aegean sea (those that were not under Italian occupation), they rose up against the Turks who did not put up any resistance. Three years later, the French occupy the island abolishing the Greek authorities and install themselves on the island until 1920 when they hand it over to Italy.
From this fateful and dark moment onwards, the noble island was plounged into mourning and grief. Its great cultural progress as well as its shipping and trade declined and many inhabitants, unble to put up with the Italian yoke, started to expatriate, the population decreased to about 2,000.
Mourning and terrorism are prevalent on the island until Sept. 1943 when an army of occupation disembarked from the Greek destroyer "Pavlos Kountouriotis". The inhabitants do not proceed to demonstrations but observe this new disembarkation with anxiety as if they had a presentiment that something bigger would follow.
Two months later German airplanes bombed the island; almost all the houses were destroyed. . The few inhabitants that had remained on the island are evacuated and taken to Palestine as refugees for two whole years.
Kastellorizo, once a happy islands was now completely destroyed and deserted. The island remained for two more years under British occupacy until March 7th 1947 when Kastellorizo was annexed to Greece and remains Greek ever since.
