The Thermi Towers

In Thermi, in the time of the Genovese occupation, tower houses were built which most of the time served as the summer home of the wealthy urban townspeople staying there temporarily over the summer to oversee the agricultural work. At the same time, they also were refuges for their owners initially from the pirate raids and then from pillagers. These towers remind us of medieval defense bastions and some of them still exhibit certain fortress features, such as the lack of a typical entrance on the ground floor, murder holes, gun slits, etc. These are three-storey stone structures with a single pyramid roof, which covers all bay windows, dating back to the end of the 18^th century, but most of what we see today belong to the 19^th century. As an exception the Magnisalis Tower in Thermi and the Vougioukas Tower in Pyrgoi Thermis have four storeys. The top floor was built with a light wall construction (“bagdatí”) including bay windows which were converted into roomy chambers serving the luxurious living of the town’s nobility. In the early period the tower houses were purely defensive and fortress-like. After some time when outside threats started to decline, these houses started to be equipped with one or more bay windows on the top floor with wide openings. The towers usually were placed in the middle of an expansive farmland surrounded by a tall wall. These installations were self-sufficient in terms of water supply by having a well in the courtyard and a rainwater tank close to the home’s ground floor. The oldest tower still being used in Thermi is the Nianias Tower built in 1647.