It is one of the most beautiful local villages of Halkidiki by the sea. It is located towards the end of the Kassandra Peninsula. And the name alone can give a sense of the environment of this village. According to tradition, the village changed its name from Kapsochora, as it burned down in 1805, to Pefkohori. The even older name is not known.
In the old village with the typical Halkidiki alleys that all end in its beautiful and comfortable landscaped square, there you will find restaurants, shops of various kinds, there you will meet residents who will offer you the traditional Halkidiki hospitality. Crossing the alleys of the village you will see the beautiful gardens of the houses with the blooming lemon trees (characteristic of the village), the blooming jasmines and the wide variety of roses. You will want to enjoy all of this if you get tired of the modern life that you have the opportunity to live in the developed tourist area of the beach.
The beautiful beach, one kilometer long in front of the settlement and a total of 14 kilometers with its blue color and crystal clearness, is the heart of the “hidden paradise” of Halkidiki. With a sand beach whose quality gives you the feeling of velvet. You will have the opportunity to calm down from everyday life. Watching the sun set, you will feel once again the feeling of the “hidden paradise”. That is the time when the lights of the boutiques, bars, discos, restaurants change your mood and predispose you to the beginning of another life.
In the beautiful taverns and restaurants with increased service with their kind staff and with dishes that satisfy every taste, starting from the aperitif, the typical Halkidiki octopus, tasting the local ouzo, you will decide on a fresh fish or a local meat or if all this seems too much for you, the modern snack bars will help you prepare for the nightlife that is full of surprises. Bars with young people and live music are a good start to finish in the modern clubs.
Late in the morning, various bistros offer you after an absolute fun, the absolute rest to face the start of a new day. For your accommodation, you do not need to worry much as the ring road brings you directly to our village.
A multitude of new hotels with modern equipment and high-quality services provided by trained employees make your stay more than comfortable, unless you want your stay to be in one of the equipped apartments, all with the approval of the Greek National Tourism Organization.
Equipped in a characteristic way, you will feel and want to later become a permanent resident of Pefkohori. If you are lucky, you will be able to rent a villa.
From the port stairs you are given the opportunity to take a daily cruise with boats and dolphins and you will be given the opportunity to see and get to know the rest of the coasts of our peninsula, to travel to Sithonia or to the unique Mount Athos. If you do not have your own car, the frequent bus service and the rich network of rental cars give you the comfort of getting to know the beautiful peninsula of Kassandra or even taking a trip to Thessaloniki. If you want, you can also walk in our pine forest from which our village takes its name and see ancient pine trees and olive groves as well as small bee communities from which the famous Halkidiki honey, known all over the world, is produced.
Pefkohori, which is 105 km from Thessaloniki, awaits you with every type of transport to offer you holidays in the “secret paradise” of Greece, starting from a period that opens with the Holy Week of Easter and ending with the short summer of Agios Dimitrios. If you didn't know it until now or if you didn't live a few days as you would have liked, Pefkohori is where your own vacation dreams can come true and is waiting for you.
In the summer, the area hosts the famous ITENVA sailing races, which start from the natural marina of Glarokavos.
In the northwestern part of the port, where the ships anchor today, ruins of a Roman settlement were found. In the same area, a treasure with coins of Lysimachus, who was king of Thrace, was also discovered. Around 1590, the Great Metochion "Ander" of the Iviron Monastery is mentioned in the area, which was expropriated before the war. Today, only the half-destroyed windmill survives. The residents of Pefkohori participated in the revolution of 1821. A great fighter of the revolution of 1821 was Georgios Giannaki.
In searching for historical facts about Pefkohori in Kassandra, in order to compose this note, I was surprised to find that, in both Greek and foreign scientific bibliography, there is nothing relevant. Even our perennial professor Mr. Panagiotis Stamos, in his valuable work on Kassandra, does not refer to the undoubtedly existing Pefkohori in Kassandra and a popular tourist destination. I finally found the answer in the collective work "Paysages de Macedoine" (Paris, 1986), useful for the student of the historical topography of Turkish-occupied Halkidiki: Pefkohori = Kapsochora.
Tradition, recorded as early as 1869, mentions the change of the name of the village to Kapsochora after its burning in 1805, without preserving the older name. I believe that the name before 1805 was not Pefkohori either, because at that time there were much fewer pine trees in Kassandra, they were most commonly called “tsiamia” or “pitzakia”, and the people of the time had an innate respect for its history. Logic says that pine trees do not make up a village, and the innate respect for history would not allow, for example, the people of Sykia to even think of changing the name of their village, even if they were given a thousand things in the world.
Considering the renaming as indicative of the fact that the people of Kapsochora wish, for reasons known to them, to be cut off from their past, I am forced to serve their wish and avoid referring to it. However, I declare that, if I were not a Nikitian, I would gladly become a Kapsochora after what I learned about Historical Kapsochora, in preparation for the present note which will be limited to information about areas outside the village.
The large marsh of Glarokavos, a problem of the area for many centuries, seems to have had a very different form during the Roman period. Taking into account that the sea level was then about two meters lower, we must assume that the marsh was very limited and occupied only a part of the current port. In the northwestern sector of the port, that is, where today the fishing boats tie up, there were the (indistinguishable on the surface) ruins of a notable settlement of the Roman period, which were destroyed by 3/4 (at least), when the excavations for the formation of the port were taking place.
We are unaware of any historical evidence for the settlement of Glarokavos. Besides, I think this is the first time that anything has been written about it. Around the end of the last century, a significant treasure of gold coins of the king of Thrace Lysimachus was found somewhere there, the memory of which is still alive in the area after more than a hundred years. The hiding of these coins may mean that during the 3rd century BC there was already a settlement in the area that continued to exist during the Roman period.
The location of the settlement on the sandy strip between the marsh and the sea presupposes some essential relationship with both. The only relationship that we can think of, combining the case with the similar example that I investigated by excavation at Gerani of the Rural Prisons, is that salt pans were systematically operating here as well. In this case, the existence of the settlement aimed, mainly, at serving the functional needs of the salt pan.
The settlement, whose name we do not know, also survived during the early Christian period. One of the churches of the settlement is in ruins under the current chapel of Zoodochos Pigi. It was located outside the northwestern limits of the settlement and must not have been its central temple. From the few marble architectural elements that can be seen, it seems to be an early Christian basilica built around the end of the 5th century. Based on the pottery seen in the area of the settlement, we can say that it ceased to exist around the middle of the 6th century, that is, at the time when the famous Kassandria was destroyed.
Alongside the settlement of Glarokavos, there were also a number of scattered small settlements of the same period, on the charming and, for the most part, pine-covered hills to the south. This dispersion is indicative of the feeling of security that possessed the subjects of Rome at that time, when the “Pax Romana” (= Roman peace) was a basic feature of the state. However, the main economic and, apparently, administrative center of the area was the rich settlement in the neighboring Chrouso of Paliouri, a subject that goes beyond the limits of our note.
After centuries of silence, clear information about the area only begins again in the 1590s, when the large “Ander” meteoch of the Iveron monastery is now organized. This time, the Monastery acquired it with a “carpet” from the well-known in the History of Kassandra Gazanfer Aga, around 1591. According to the “hodjeti” (= title of ownership) of 1596, the current marsh functioned as a salt marsh. I consider it likely that Ander is related to the meteoch “Gerani (or)” mentioned in the sources, which the Monastery in Kassandra already possessed in 1047 (if not from 980) and retained at least until 1079 (if not until 1101), when it is mentioned “after this church” (probably of St. Andrew).
The estate, with the ambiguous name "Ander", was expropriated before the war and of its buildings, only the half-ruined windmill can be seen today.
Ioakeim Papangelos Economist-Archaeologist (10th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities) Kassandra
Periodic Publication of the Cultural Association Thessaloniki's Kassandrinwn
RESEARCH & PHOTOGRAPHS, TEXT EDITING-PAGE DESIGN Vangelis Katsarinis - Electronic, Website Builder
MUNICIPALITY OF KASSANDRA: https://www.kassandra.gr/ PEFKOHORI CULTURAL ASSOCIATION "Alkion": https://www.facebook.com/alkion.pefkohoriou PEFKOHORI VILLAGE: https://www.facebook.com/groups/pefkohorivillage/ MYPEFKOHORI: https://www.pefkohorivillage.com/
"Saint John the Russian and Confessor" Year of foundation 1989
Postal address: Postal Code 630 85
Pefkochori, Halkidiki
Abbot Archimandrite Timotheos Tsotras
Monks 6
Tel. +302374061656
