ARCHITECTURE

The city of Hydra itself is a large and representative sample of the peculiar local architecture, which combines island and mainland architectural elements. Simple houses or mansions are distinguished by an idiosyncratic but at the same time impressive architecture.

In its heyday, the city of Hydra reopens to the sea, expands and generally takes on its current form.

Hydra houses can be classified into four (4) categories. The first houses that were built on the island, during the settlement of the 15th century, belonged to the first category. They were concentrated in the area of the hill of Caiaphas and most of them are now in ruins.

In the second category are the simple folk constructions, made of crude argolith, “the makrynari”. These houses were built to house the refugees from Argolis after the Turkish-Venetian War and the Orlovics.

These houses had the characteristic long narrow single work area of the top floor (the birani), together with living and storage areas. The utility rooms and cisterns were located on the lower, even semi-underground levels that had irregular plasterwork, small windows and low height.

There were heavy internal shutters on the doors and windows, as well as wide wooden planks for false ceilings. Floors made of hydraic tiles, red or gray on the ground floors and in the basements. Wooden floors on the floors and wooden load-bearing structures with beams for the roofs (terraces) that collected water, for the cisterns. Later the roofs were replaced by ceramic roofs.

hile most families lived in these traditional buildings, the wealthiest shipowners and squires built their large mansions in a completely different style, the houses of the third category.

The Mansions of Hydra, on the outside were simple and spare, but on the inside they were compared to Genoese Renaissance mansions, as they had rare comforts, famous and luxurious furniture, carpets, household utensils and decorative objects, souvenirs brought from ports of the West and East, which gave grandeur in the imposing Mansions with their excellent construction and quality.

Tradition informs us that the mainly Genoese architects who were originally brought to Hydra by the “Tombazi” family, are the initiators of the multi-storey stone houses that are reminiscent of the symmetrical layout of the floor plans, the central halls, the beautiful marble staircases, the inner courtyards and the arched loggias, the Renaissance palaces of Northern Italy. These mansions were built in a short period of time in the early 19th century, they were very similar to each other and were usually built on steep hillsides, usually having two good floors and two additional floors with kitchens, cellars, storerooms, cisterns and staff rooms.

The official entrance was on the highest floor, but there were always other accesses on the lower levels, thus forming an interesting grid of courtyards and staircases, together with carved marble “portosas” and imposing wooden shutters. Rhythmic rows of windows organize the views of the two good floors and the large tiled hipped roofs set the example for all other new buildings. This ultimately gave the island its unified charming colorful image.

Most of these houses had an external staircase leading to the upper floor. Their rooms are large, high-ceilinged, with arches, with embossed interior decoration, frescoes, garlands, geometric compositions on the marble floors, doors and painted wooden ceilings. Their doors and windows are usually grey, tile, white or blue and there are also white borders on the windows.

There were separate rooms for men and women, a large hall, a small room where the iconostasis was located, a special place for smoking the hookah while the auxiliary rooms were usually outside the main house.

A fourth category is the neoclassical houses built or renovated after Otto’s enthronement in 1833. Neoclassicism embraces large mansions, such as the Mansion of Georgios Sahinis and Eleni Theodorakis now Verveniotis behind the tavern “Xeri Elia”, the Leousi Mansion and the neoclassical Rafalia, along with its historic pharmacy and other simple houses.

Inside, the bright colors and painted ceilings differentiate the atmosphere and aesthetics that now frame a strongly urban lifestyle.

The simplest of the old houses or the ones that were built recently are also in harmony with the idiosyncratic Hydraic architecture, creating a wonderful residential complex. They are surrounded by a courtyard walled with a paddock that has a large external door and are simple, rectangular in shape, with tiled roofs, ashlar cornices and flat austere facades, interrupted by symmetrically placed openings. In most houses we find cisterns and marble fountains.

A unique decorative element is the white border of the walls, made with lime to break the monotony of the gray stone. Gray stone, which abounds in Hydra and neighboring Dokos, wood and “kokina”, a clay-colored mortar, are the main building materials of these houses.