Andritsena

By car

From Athens, 239 km (2 hours and 58 minutes)

From Patra, 162 km (2 hours and 30 minutes)

From Kalamata, 98 km (1 hour and 38 minutes)

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According to tradition, Andritsaina owes its name to the wife of a Cretan shepherd named Andrikos, who -chasing his runaway sheep- came to a spring on mount Lykaion. There he built an inn that after his death was kept by his wife Andrikaina (meaning "the wife of Andrikos"). From her name and from the local pronunciation of "kai" as "tsai", the inn was named "the hostel of Andritsaina". When houses were built in the surrounding area, the settlement was named "Andritsaina".

The area was part of ancient Arcadia. Andritsaina flourished during the Frankish rule (13th-14th centuries AD) and is mentioned in the Chronicle of the Morea. The village played a crucial role during the Orlov Revolt and the Greek War of Independence. In 1826, Andritsaina was destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha's troops.

Source: wikipedia.org

• DIMITRIOS KIOUSOPOULOS

Dimitrios Kiousopoulos was an important Greek jurist and a politician. He was born in 1892 in the town of Andritsaina, Elis, Peloponnese.He began a successful legal career in 1917. Following World War II, he was a Public Prosecutor heavily involved in the expulsion of Chams (Muslims of Albanian descent, many of whom had been enthusiastic collaborators with occupying Axis powers) from northern Greece, sentencing 178 to death, 370 to life imprisonment, and about 1,950 to death in absentia. He became Prosecutor for the Supreme Court (Areios Pagos) from 1950 to 1961. When Nikolaos Plastiras was voted out of office, Kiousopoulos became the caretaker Prime Minister of Greece for 39 days, from 11 October to 19 November 1952 when General Alexander Papagos and the Greek Rally party won a major victory. He is one of 17 people to serve less than 40 days as Prime Minister, and the only one to do so in the 1950s. Kiousopoulos died on 20 January 1977 in Athens.

• PANAGIOTIS ANAGNOSTOPOULOS

Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos (1790-1854) was a Greek revolutionary leader during the Greek War of Independence and a member of Filiki Eteria, the secret organization whose purpose was to overthrow the Ottoman rule of Greece and establish an independent Greek state.He was born in Andritsaina around 1790 and was part of a poor family. In 1818 emigrated with his family to Smyrna (now Izmir) while he attended a school in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He then relocated to Odessa where he worked at the drapery shop of Athanassios Sekeris, a wealthy Greek of Constantinople. There he met Nikolaos Skoufas with whom he was initiated into Filiki Eteria.He died in 1854 in Athens from cholera, transmitted from an English-French soldier. In 1884, he was honoured with a central road in Kolonaki.