Open-air water-power museum

Dimitsana is a village some 30 km north-west of Tripolis in the Central Peloponnese. The museum, a site of the Museum Network of the Cultural Foundation of the Piraeus Bank Group (PIOP), is close to a celebrated beauty spot called Kefalari-tou Al-Yanni. All the restored industrial buildings on the 10 ha site depended on water power. A corn mill has working equipment powered by a horizontal wheel, and adjoins the miller’s house. The same building accommodated a fulling mill, of which some 20 fulling vats remain. A powder mill is one of many in Greece where, from the sixteenth century, villages collected and ground saltpetre which was paid to the Turkish authorities as tax. The mill was an important source of gunpowder for the Greeks in the War of Independence against the Turks in the early nineteenth century. All the principal structures have been restored of a tannery, including the lime pits, tanning vats, and areas for hanging, drying and dressing hides. The ruins of two further tanneries have been stabilised and interpreted to visitors.