Bilgehan Uçak wrote: “The priest’s house”

If I told you, “I stayed in the most beautiful house in Dimitsana,” you probably wouldn’t believe it; if you’re a polite person, you might think I’m trying to compliment my hosts, if you’re not, you might think I’m lying.

But without a doubt, I stayed in the most beautiful house in Dimitsana.

Hercules and his wife Millas decided to live in a detached house with a garden instead of an apartment, and in 1983 they bought the house of the village's priest named Nikolas and settled in Dimitsana.

The person who directed them here was Hercules Millas’s cousin, Akilas – I had met him through his book on Büyükada – who said that Dimitsana was one of the two most uniquely beautiful villages in Greece.

The villagers were not at all happy that someone from outside the village had come and bought a house – and a “priest’s house” at that.

The name Hercules Millas was also engraved in the villagers' language as "the man who bought the priest's house".

What's funny is that the name of Hercules Millas' son is also written into the village identity card as "the son of the man who bought the priest's house."

This is one of the most interesting features of Dimitsana: the village does not have a square; it is just some streets that cut across a street that stretches along the length of what we call the village.

The people of Dimitsana had a different idea for the "priest's house."

They planned to level this area and create a square for the village, raised on pillars.

Because the “priest’s house” has a very beautiful location in the middle of the village, overlooking the forest-covered mountains opposite.

However, the project of building a square on pillars was not an easy task because if this “new square” were built, there was a high probability that it would look like a dagger stuck in the centuries-old originality of the village.

The villagers pressured the priest not to sell his house, and as if that were not enough, they did not hesitate to treat Herkül Millas as "a cunning man who exploits the priest's needs for his own gain."

On the other hand, the villagers could have come together and made an offer that was easily higher than the price offered by the Millas family, and through collective effort, they could have purchased the priest's house and used it as the village square.

Everyone talked, but no one put their hands in their pockets.

Thus, Hercules Millas, known all over the world by his own name, was recorded in Dimitsana as “the man who took the priest’s house.”

In fact, this was not easy either; the priest, fed up with the pressure from the villagers, increased the price at the last minute, but when the Millas family agreed to give it up, he did not give up on selling the house.

Dimitsana was a place where only twenty families lived regularly in the eighties, where hardly anyone came except in August, where there was no barber for a long time after the only barber in the village died, and where nothing was available except basic necessities.

After purchasing the house, the Millas family made several renovations, both large and small.

Meanwhile, Hercules Millas changed the historiography of the village, even though the villager refrained from mentioning his name.

Herkül Millas saw the name of Dimitsana mentioned for the first time in the records of the Venetians in 1700 when they moved.

However, he knew that there was an older record of Dimitsana in the Ottoman archives.

When his historian friend Levent Kayapınar published the documents he found in the archives, he pushed back the date of Dimitsana by 250 years — to 1461.

In 1461, a total of 754 people lived in 142 households in Dimitsana.

Documents in the archives show that Albanians also had a significant share in Dimitsana's population, but what is most striking is that the surnames of some families living in Dimitsana today date back to that date.

Since we went into history, let's try to calculate the age of the house.

The “priest’s house” is, as one might expect, adjacent to the church – Agios Vasilios.

But there is something odd about the plan of the church built in 1770.

If the "parson's house" - of course, the oldest part of the house, and its expansion over time - had not been there when the church was built, then logically the plan of the church would not have been as it is.

Apparently, they had to "turn" the church a bit since the house was there.

This brings the house's history back to the 1760s.

I stayed on the ground floor of this house, which you can call "the priest's house" or "the most beautiful house in Dimitsana" depending on your mood.

The lower floor was formerly used as a stable.

So, where I was staying used to be home to donkeys, sheep, goats, and chickens; and, thanks to Millas, they also stacked horseshoes, scrap metal, and manure there—now that I remember, am I learning all this information just to avoid coming back?

I won't lie, Hercules Millas turned the stable into a palace baby.

Original wooden doors, walls, ornaments, floors... and he also made a Turkish corner with a sofa.

I said that I stayed in the most beautiful house in Dimitsana, but let me not forget, I stayed in the most beautiful room in the most beautiful house in Dimitsana.

Before dinner, we all watched Herkül Millas' award-winning documentary, "The Other Village," which I had heard of before but couldn't find anywhere.

In the documentary, Millas shows how the mentalities of the people of Dimitsana and Birgi, in other words, the Greeks and the Turks, are common.

Lying, distorting history, creating hostility, talking about hostility, hating the other you don't even know, and perhaps worst of all, instilling this hatred and hostility in children and growing it from generation to generation...

“The Other Village” is a flawless documentary shot amidst impossible circumstances.

In short, I think I can now say this: I watched a wonderful documentary in the most beautiful house in Dimitsana and stayed in the most beautiful room.

Something is missing, I will rewrite it.

I stayed in the most beautiful room of Dimitsana, in the most beautiful house, with the wonderful people who created that beauty, watching a wonderful documentary.

Now it happened.