Galaxidi: Quiet, Chaos and Flour

Galaxidi is a lovely small town three-hours West of Greece’s capital Athens; if you find yourself here you might think and feel that you are not really on Greek mainland and that somehow you ended up on an island: you’d notice the unique building’s style, the convivial atmosphere and the familiarity the people seem to have with each other, and the slow-pace everybody seem to enjoy. What I tell you is that this feeling you get is not entirely wrong, there is a reason why this elegant village has such distinctive traits. Galaxidi, in fact, was not connected by any road to any other near by towns until the 1960s, people were using ships to get to Itea (in front of Galaxidi on the opposite shore of the gulf) were there was the main road that connected them to Central Greece. This is why it feels so unique around here. Nowdays Galaxidi is quiet and calm and is a popular choice for a weekend get-away. Things change dramatically during its Carnival celebrations.

The town completely transforms during the Clean Monday (the last day of Carnival and the beginning of Orthodox Lent) when people gather on the streets by the town’s harbour and start tossing flour at each other. And things get pretty wild and chaos takes over!

This celebration is called Alevromoutzouroma (flour wars), it starts around noon when people of all ages and dressed as bad as possible are given the “ammos” for the battle, colouring is added to the flour and then the battle begins until the supplies run out. Visitors can choose just to watch the battle, but they better stay alert!