The gulf view
Volos and the whole gulf beneath you from the edge cafés.
**"The balcony of Pelion"** — a stone village hung on a steep slope directly above Volos, from which you see **the whole gulf beneath you** from almost every corner. It is the best-known Pelion village and the closest to the city (**only 17 km**), and its houses are traditional **Pelion mansions**: grey stone, roofs of **stone slabs** rather than tile, projecting wooden balconies and small high windows. On its square are a huge **plane tree** and a fountain, the church of **Agios Ioannis** with a carved marble basin, and cafés right on the edge. ✅ It has a **folklore museum** in a traditional mansion, and a **café whose wall was painted by Theophilos**, Greece's best-known naive painter. ⚠ And it is **entirely a walking village**: closed to cars, with stepped streets.
Volos and the whole gulf beneath you from the edge cafés.
A huge plane tree, a fountain and a church with a carved marble basin.
A painting by Greece's best-known naive artist on a café wall.
Makrinitsa, 37011 Magnesia, Greece
**A distinctive local architecture born of geography and wealth together.** ✅ **The form**: a **three-storey** stone building that narrows below and widens above: **the ground floor is solid stone** with few small windows (stores, animals, protection), **and the upper floor projects out** beyond the base with wooden balconies and many windows — giving a wider living space over a narrower footing. ✅ **The roof is grey stone slabs** rather than tile — because **stone is locally available** and stands up to the **snow** that falls on Pelion in winter. ✅ **Why they were grand**: the Pelion villages obtained **privileges and partial self-government** under Ottoman rule, **and their trade flourished** — silk, textiles and wool especially — and their men emigrated to trade **and sent the wealth home**. So they built houses out of proportion to the villages' size. ⚠ **A similar pattern** exists in **Zagori** in Epirus — **the same mechanism**: privileges + emigrant trade + local stone = village architecture finer than the size suggests.
**Greece's best-known folk painter — who lived and died poor and unknown, and became a national icon afterwards.** ✅ **Who he was**: **Theophilos Hatzimihail** (about 1870–1934), a painter from Lesbos who moved around Thessaly and Pelion for decades. **He had no artistic training** and painted **directly onto walls** — the walls of cafés, shops and houses — sometimes **in exchange for food and a bed**. He wore old traditional Greek dress and was regarded as an eccentric. ✅ **His style**: **naive** — flat perspective, strong direct colour and profuse detail; his subjects were **the heroes of the Greek revolution**, rural life and myth. ✅ **What happened after his death**: a French critic discovered him and his work was collected, **and he came to be counted among the most important modern Greek artists** — with a museum on Lesbos and works in the Athens museums. ⚠ **And at Makrinitsa** one of his **murals survives in the café on the square** — painted in place and still there; **which is rare**, since most of his walls have been lost with their buildings.
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