Plain, sparta, river, monasteries and especially the locals, are all that make the visitor of Grevena definitely want to go to Deskati.
The Deskati mountain town of the prefecture of Grevena at an altitude of 860 meters. It is located at the southeastern tip of the prefecture, near its borders with the prefectures of Kozani, Larissa, Trikala and is the southernmost town in Macedonia.
Deskati was recognized as a community in 1918 with its seat in the settlement and belonged to the prefecture of Kozani. In 1943 it belongs to the prefecture of Larissa and in 1964 it is recognized as a municipality that now belongs to the prefecture of Grevena. According to the Kallikratis plan, together with the villages of Agios Georgios, Paraskevi, Gilofo and Diasellaki, they constitute the municipal community of Deskati, which belongs to the municipal unit of Deskati.
The first reference to Deskati, as a settlement, is made in the Ottoman census of 1454-1455 and has continued since then, although with variations of its name.
Formerly it was called Disikatata, testifying to its Vlach origin, from the years when Vlach populations spent their summers in the mountains of the area, mainly from Trikala. With the Ottomans, it was called “ziavelia”, which then meant “distressed, unhappy”, a nickname that is still widely used today.
From Deskati came the militant warlords of the revolution of 1821 and armatoloi of Hassia Piraei, while the looting and arson took place in 1854. The Greek army entered the town, after an all-day battle with the Ottoman army, on 7 October 1912 and annexed it to the Kingdom of Greece.
On April 16, 1941, the German Occupation forces passed through Deskati. The town was under Italian occupation until September 8, 1943, when it returned to German control.
The last appearance of the Germans took place on February 18, 1944. E.AM teams were developed in the area. from 1942, which with the end of the war took part in the attack on Deskati (21/9/1946), as well as in the civil war.
The oldest oak in Europe is located in Deskati of Grevena
It is 1,300 years old and is located just two kilometers from the main square of the village. It is a rare jumper oak (quersus pedunculiflora), which according to the scientists who carried out its tree dating, seems to have sprouted around 720 AD.
It has a diameter of 2.25 meters and the perimeter of its trunk, at the height of the parapet, is 7.06 meters. It is located at an altitude of 658 meters and its height exceeds twenty-three meters. The older inhabitants of Deskati remember that when they returned from the estates they definitely stopped at the “thick tree”, as they called it, to cool off in its shade, but no one believed that this tree is super-age-old.
Another uniqueness of Deskati is that it has the oldest rocks in Greece, 1 billion years old. They are rocks, from Paliouria and Deskati to the monastery of Zavorda, with strange colors, red, green, purple, orange, which emerged from the depths of Tethys, the great sea that once shared the planet with the one and only continent, Paggaia, and came to the surface when the tectonic plates began to separate from each other.
Geologists locate in Deskati the place where the Eurasian from the African plate separated, here they say “Europe was born”. In fact, in Vounasa, in one of the peaks of Kamvounia, the “scratches” caused by the glaciers that covered these areas at that time are visible to the naked eye. The global geological interest has made Descati a destination for scientists from all over the world studying the first pages of Creation here.
The visitor learns the city quickly, with a walk between the two large squares, one with the big church of Constantine and Helen, and the second with the City Hall, in the surrounding alleys and just outside the city with the panoramic of the view from the surrounding slopes.
But the Deskatians themselves, open and hospitable, are the ones who keep the manners and customs unchanged and communicate them with pride to the visitors. One of them is the Easter custom of Andromana (or Androumana), on the day of Zoodochou Pigi, where the celebrants form human towers by climbing on each other’s shoulders.
More about the customs of Deskata can be found in the Folklore Exhibition that operates in the old school of Deskati. Although the exhibits there are constantly changing, there are some very interesting things. And through costumes and photographs of decades the visitor can learn about the manners of other times, when deprivations forced the newlyweds to pass on the fingers instead of wedding rings the coppers from the curtains, the bride to wear a veil a piece of the same curtain, to hold ivy bridal bouquets.
The Aliakmonas river crosses the area of Deskati from one end to the other. With its waters it gives life to the plain, while the dam of Hilarion flooded a large area raising the level of the river and changing the morphology of the area: the gorge that until recently “embraced” the famous Monastery of Zavorda, today has become a lake of incomparable beauty.
The Monastery of Zavorda
The monastery was founded by Saint Nikanoras in 1534, at some point he managed to maintain a large fortune and quickly became very closely associated with the folk customs and traditions of the area. The hagiographies that have been preserved in the monastery’s katholikon impress with their purity colors and their unusual representations, in fact the relics kept today in Zavorda are considered of incalculable value.
The Monastery stands at the top of a steep hill and can only be accessed from its north side. On the south side, just four to five meters from the waters of the lake, still stands the hermitage of Saint Nicanor. Before founding this historic and famous monastery of Zavorda, Saint Nicanor practiced in a humble hermitage that survives to this day. / p>
This hermitage is located near the Monastery, and Osios practiced in it with many efforts and endless vigils as well as fasts for 16 consecutive years. In this inaccessible and humble hermitage of Saint Nikanoras, during the difficult times, the precious historical and great relics of the Monastery were kept.
Panagia
The Community of Panagia (the old Tourniki, the ancient Omolion, the Byzantine Moliskos), a very beautiful small village, built next to Aliakmonas, at an altitude of 420 m., 20 km NW of Deskati.
The uniform little houses built in the place of those destroyed by the earthquake of ’95, give the feeling of a brand new village. The few inhabitants of Panagia 70 in winter, 120 in summer, are mainly engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry. According to their stories, the community never moved and during the Turkish occupation it was a village.
Life in the area has always been intertwined with the important monasteries of Saint Nikanoras Zavordas and Panagia Tourniki.
The monastery of Panagia is a very important monument, in which in 1959 a manuscript code was discovered with the entire Dictionary of Patriarch Photios (820-891), which contains excerpts of lost works of ancient classics.
The road up there is in very good condition and what attracts the visitor even more is the rare beauty landscape that is formed in the area of the monastery, since right next to it passes the river Aliakmonas. The I.M. Entrance of the Virgin (of the Virgin), is located 2 km east of the community and is probably an older monument than that of Zavorda, with remarkable frescoes.
