geography

The Great Lompotina, as it was named during the Ottoman domination, is built amphitheatrically in one of the south-western mountainsides of Bardoysion, Syrta and with a northern - north-eastern view. Surrounded from the mountains of Bardoysion, it is very well protected from the wind and as the old people say, the village is located in a "loympa" (hole)! That’s why the name Lompotina.

the village

Right and left of the village and almost at the same altitude of 1.050 m. we found the hills Lakoyla and Saint George. The hill Lakoyla is verdant with firs and chestnut trees and we can find the Medical centre, the Town hall as well as a church dedicated in Saint Athanassios. The hill of Saint George is found on the entrance of the village as we come from Nafpaktos, it is covered from firs and cedars. At the end of the hill we also found the homonym church. In the middle of the village we find the main church dedicated to Saint Paraskevi, the public square, the market with coffee shops, and an antique bus that used to connect Nafpaktos - Ano Chora in the old times and we used to call it Karnavalo (Karnaval).

architecture

The old houses of the village are built from slate at their majority they present a particular architectural interest with a lot of influences from the architecture of Eipiros (northern - western Greece). One can notice that all the traditional houses have a four sided tile roof. They were creating utterance from all four sides of the house (not only two as it is used). Thus they were able to get rid of the snow easier with a small utterance. With the wooden tick stick called synazi that is obvious on the sides of the houses, they accomplished to share the weight of the house uniformly, while the corner stones helped in its better support.

history

Thanks to the inaccessible the area became a shelter for many residents during difficult eras of Greece. In order to avoid the conquerors, the Greeks used to migrate from the big cities to the villages that were inaccessible for the Turks, the German and the Italians. Until the Second World War, the agriculture and the livestock-farming flourished but the village had a population of a few thousand, and people where starving during the wars. With the end of the war, the government decided to give a free ticket by boat to America at those who had been affected by the rebels. Thus a migratory wave begun and in combination with the current of urbanism, the population of entire Mountainous Nafpaktia shrank in such a level, that one could say that if it wasn't for the intense tourist interest during the last decades, today we would be talking for a dead region.