Bridges of Epirus inspire an international academic partnership
Stone-built, arched, proud or overgrown with weeds, the bridges of Epirus in northwestern Greece have carried thousands of stories of movement on their backs. Specifically, for the residents of the municipality of Pogoni, these bridges are not only linked to the general movement of the population but also to a word that carries heavy emotional weight: “xenitia” or Greek immigration. This is a timelessly painful issue, as over the years, the remaining residents have seen their villages empty.
For Stylianos Koukoularis, deputy mayor of Pogoni, showcasing the local bridges has both practical and symbolic significance. As he tells Kathimerini, the bridges of Pogoni, whether ornate or plain, demonstrate the desire of previous generations to connect with the rest of the country. “For us, they are an extension of our nature and land. Historically, however, they symbolize our contact with the rest of Greece. They remind us not only of the path of immigration but also of the exchange of cultural values. Above all, they symbolize the lifting of isolation and communication, as well as our current struggle against the abandonment of our part of the country.”
Pogoni’s desire for extroversion has been evident since 2004, which saw the beginning of its collaboration with the University of West Attica. This 20-year relationship laid the foundation for an ambitious idea: to create a workshop that would combine educational character with the promotion of the area’s cultural characteristics while also being beneficial to the struggling local community. The outcome was the “1st Workshop for the Documentation and Promotion of Stone Bridges in Greece (SCANNER).”
‘They symbolize the lifting of isolation and communication, as well as our current struggle against the abandonment of our part of the country’
In June, for six days, an interdisciplinary university team of professors and students, consisting of surveyor engineers, electrical engineers, architectural engineers, environmental engineers, and archaeologist-museologists, studied seven of the 14 stone bridges of Pogoni in great detail, proceeding with their documentation and promotion. In the future, the remaining seven will also be documented.
As Dr Vassilis Pagounis, professor in the Department of Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering at the University of West Attica, who is also research director of the project, points out, the workshop was aimed at getting the students to get in touch with and become familiar with modern scientific documentation methods. It also sought to acquaint them with the management of big data in cultural heritage, aiming to highlight and manage the history and collective memory of a place.
Greek and foreign students became acquainted with the culture and traditions of an area that was previously unknown to them. “A total of 13 postgraduate students participated. It was indeed a multicultural group, as their countries of origin were – apart from Greece – a mix from Latin America, Brazil, China, Cyprus, Poland and the US. Among them were students from Princeton University and the Polytechnic University of Milan, who found themselves in a historic mountainous area that was not on their map until recently.”
Pagounis is from Pogoni, Epirus, so he was already familiar with the bridges and the simple constructions of the Epirus watermills. He says that these constructions, often by anonymous craftsmen, are part of the local tradition and remain untouched despite the changes brought by the local road network. “Their construction dates from the late 1850s to the 1920s. Single-arched, double-arched and triple-arched, they form a network of bridges so beautiful and well-constructed that they survive to this day. To achieve their three-dimensional depiction, we used cutting-edge technology, such as terrestrial laser scanners as well as airborne ones.”
The data collected during the workshop will be processed to create a database that will be available to a wide range of users and can be expanded with new data in the future. Specifically, the collected material will form the basis for the cartographic visualization of points of interest and thematic routes, allowing future online visitors to digitally navigate the Pogoni area. In the third and final phase of the workshop, the website and corresponding app will be designed and developed. Meanwhile, information, such as texts, historical data, photos, plans and 3D models, will be registered and managed.
Koukoularis is grateful to the professors and students of the workshop. But he also extends the following invitation to anyone who wants to visit Pogoni: “Use these bridges to reach our villages, meet the few people who persist like Don Quixotes in saving our place and culture; contribute to our battle for survival and development.”
