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Places near Church
On the Apokoronas peninsula (Chania)- half-way between Vamos and Vrysses - stands an Agios Georgios monastery also known as the Karydi monastery. The first pieces of information about the monastery come from a report from the Venetian governor Francesco Barozzi to the Venetian senate in 1577 where he mentions the village of Caridhi San Zorgi. Some years later another Venetian official mentions that the village of Caridi S(an) Zorzi owes 30 services of serfdom.
The Egyptian census from 1834 states that the village consisted of six Christian and three Turkish families. The monastery had its great period at the same time as it had obtained a licence to produce olive oil in 1829. The oil production gave employment to many of the inhabitants in the area and for that reason the large hall with the six oil mills was built in 1860. The monastery was not mentioned in the following censuses because it had been placed under the Agia Triada monastery on Akrotiri.
The inhabitants of the area had according to tradition converted to Islam - more or less voluntarily - except the abbot of the monastery. When the Turkish authorities of the area threatened to convert the monastery into a mosque the abbot handed over the monastery to
Agia Triada which was placed under the patriarchate of Constantinople and therefore, according to Turkish law, inviolable.The village of Karydi was mentioned separately for the last time in the census of 1928 where it belonged under the rural district of
Vamos and had 31 inhabitants.
After having been uninhabited since 1900 the monastery was officially closed down in 1923 and its lands distributed among veterans from the Balkan Wars and from the unsuccessful expedition in Asia Minor. At the request of Eirinaios Galanakis, the just retired metropolitan of Kissamos and Selino (24th of August 2005), the monastery was reinstituted in 1996.
Today it is headed by prior Dorotheos who has worked hard - and still does - to renovate the old monastery.
A traditional village in Apokoronou Peninsula between Vamos and Kefalas, with only 1 kafenio, but only 2kms from the many amenities in Vamos, 9kms from Kalyves, and 6 kms from the beach at Almyrida. Lovely views of both Souda Bay and the White Mountains are available from Xirosterni. The village is well known for a wonderful festival that is held every year on August 5th.
Xirosterni used to have the name ‘Viola’ – an attractive local flower. In Ottoman times, a Turkish soldier instructed a local man to pull water from the well for his horse to drink. Ashamed and because he also didn’t want to be seen as co-operating with the enemy, the villager told the soldier that the well was empty. The Turk angrily shouted ‘why is this village called Viola? You should call it Xirosterni!’
Xirosterni is a combination of two Greek words – literally translating as ‘dry well’.
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