Aggelos Sikelianos | The last residence of the great Greek poet in Salamis

Aggelos Sikelianos | The last residence of the great Greek poet in Salamis
A small house by the sea, near the monastery of Panagia Faneromeni, was the refuge of Aggelos Sikelianos during the last and most difficult years of his life.
Aggelos Sikelianos comes to the island of Salamina for the first time around 1930. He is brought by a dear friend of his, the poet Andreas Saltaris of Salaminios. In the monastery of Faneromeni, he will meet the monk Ambrosios, a person whose fate was tied to the monastery and it is characteristic that he was the only one who did not leave it during the Occupation and not even when, shortly before the Liberation, the In July 1944, the monastery became a nunnery.
The two men developed a close friendship and in 1933, Aggelos Sikelianos, enchanted by the beauty of the place, asked for a small place, to stay and be inspired by the Mediterranean colors and the pageantry of this place.Sikelianos' request was immediately accepted by the monastery of Faneromeni, as a result of which he was granted this small house on the beach, since Sikelianos had already developed friendly relations with the inhabitants of the island, who embraced him with warmth and awe.
Looking at the small house from a distance it looks like a postcard. Approaching it, you understand why the Sicilian was enchanted by this place and chose it to spend the last years of his life there. A bit of the wave breaking right next to it, a bit of the dryness of the Mediterranean landscape is enough to enchant the soul of a poet. The house of Aggelos Sikelianos in Salamina is without a doubt a hidden gem and unknown to many.
For many years, one of the ten windmills of Salamis was located on the same spot and the small house seems to have been built in 1878 after the transfer of the water mark from Poros to the bay of Faneromeni. Until 1881, the building functioned as a military command post and at some point unknown when the building was utilized by the monastery of Faneromeni as a hermitage cell of a monk of the monastery.
The German occupation will destroy the peaceful life of Aggelos Sikelianos and Anna Kampanaris. The couple, facing great financial difficulties and not being able to survive in Athens during the Occupation, will repeatedly seek refuge in the next door and in his beloved Koulouri.From here, from the hands of the beekeeper Spyros Papanikolaou, the poet will take a precious jar of honey, to give it to the seriously ill Kostis Palamas just a week before he dies.
In the following years, Aggelos Sikelianos health deteriorated rapidly. The poet suffered for many years from hemiplegia, as a result of which his body slowly became paralyzed. On June 4, 1951, he sent his housekeeper to buy the medicine he was taking for hemiplegia. She, by mistake, instead of the medicine "Nizol", took the disinfectant "Lizol", the poet took the disinfectant without realizing the fatal mistake.
After much pain, he was transferred to the "Pammakaristos" clinic in Patision, where the seriousness of the infection was established. On June 19, 1951, after several days of hospitalization in the clinic and with a major respiratory problem, Aggelos Sikelianos breathed his last, suffering quite a bit.
Unfortunately, after Sikelianos' death in 1951, the picturesque house was completely forgotten and left to fall into disrepair until sometime in 1991, Sikelianos' then-still-living wife expressed her wish to the municipality of Salamis to have it restored and turned into a small museum. dedicated to the great Greek poet.In fact, she herself offered to donate the poet's personal items of high symbolic and emotional value, in order to create a small collection that would be proof of the connection of the Sicilian with Salamis.
In 2003 in collaboration with the Ephorate of New Monuments of Attica and was completed three years later, in 2006. This resulted in the small picturesque house being transformed into a special small museum dedicated to the life and work of Aggelos Sikelianos and to the special relationship he developed with Salamis.Unfortunately, however, Anna Kampanaris did not manage to see her dream completed, as she died just a few days before the completion of the restoration. Today, the museum-house houses particularly rare exhibits, such as Sikelianos' clothes, the couple's furniture, tools, his iron bed, letters he wrote to friends and even the phone of Eva Palmer, Sikelianos' ex-wife.
Subscribe to the channel by clicking here : bit.ly/3mDSXwF
Subscribe to Instagram by clicking here : bit.ly/32S0YWC
Subscribe to TikTok by clicking here : bit.ly/3Eq1sp9