Siatista Visit

Siatista is a relatively small town in norther Greece on the side of a mountain with a population of 5,000 or so. The picture taken from our car captures only a small part of the town but gives you a sense for it. The town used to be important for the transfer of goods between different regions in the 1,700s and 1,800s and relatively wealthy. Because of that, there were beautiful mansions (don’t think large American mansions though, think relative to the small houses of the time in Greece) owned by the wealthy merchants of the time. The town has been in decline over the last hundred years and there isn’t a lot going on there today. Those beautiful mansions were the reason for my visit. My father’s family comes from that region. Our last name (Mouchtaris) means mayor and it is understood that my great great grandfather was the mayor of the town. There was also a mansion that had our last name and I understand that my grandfather was born and grew up there. Unfortunately, when I was a young boy, my dad and his many cousins were trying to decide what to do with the house but were never able to come to an agreement (pretty typical for 9-10 family members in Greece and probably in other countries). Eventually, the mansion fell apart and was condemned even though it was deemed a historic building and eventually had to be torn down. I had heard of stories that the mansion was rebuilt and during my trip I took the opportunity to visit the town and look for the mansion. Despite my mother’s attempts to find where the mansion was located by reaching out to various relatives, she was unsuccessful, and we had little hope that we will actually succeed in finding it when we arrived. I did have a picture of it from a newspaper article from several years ago and was hoping to ask around town for information. As we entered the town, we drove around a bit but were unsuccessful. I did ask random old people walking around town but nobody had any suggestions.

My wife then had a brilliant idea. She suggested going to the city hall and asking there. That was much more successful. First, we got to see a beautiful building as you can see in the picture but also found a lady working there that had a friend with the same last name as me who still lives in town. She reached out to him and we were able to visit him at his work. He turned out to be a second cousin and was kind enough to point us to the house and give us directions. We were also very lucky that as we visited the house the owner was there doing choirs in the yard. She was kind enough to show us around, let us take pictures, and tell us the story of how she and her husband rebuilt the house. Apparently, her husband used to live next to the Mouchtaris mansion and always wanted to buy the place. Once it was condemned he bought it from my family and started the process of rebuilding it. It took him seven years and several court fights to finally get the permit from the city because the building was deemed historic and there were very strict rules on how to rebuild it. The house really looks spectacular and is one of the most beautiful buildings in town.