Dan Leon, Will Bruce, and Katie Rask enjoy the evening
On the second evening of their stay in Pylos this year, participants in the “Deep Peloponnese” trip were invited for drinks and a light dinner at the house of Mrs. Eleni Samaraki, prominent citizen of the town and widow of Antonis Samarakis, one of the best-known Greek fiction writers of the 20th century. Mrs. Samaraki has lovingly restored her father’s house in the center of Pylos: the main beam of the ceiling of her great room consists of the salvaged keel of a ship wrecked in the Battle of Navarino in 1827. The garden of the house occupies the area where the headquarters of General Maison, commander of the French expeditionary force that freed the Peloponnese of the occupying forces of Ibrahim Pasha in 1828, once stood. This is the second year that Mrs. Samaraki has offered extraordinary hospitality to students of the School. Our visit to Pylos was described in “Eleftheria,” a Messenian newspaper, in its October 7 edition, in a story that also described recent work of ASCSA in mending and publishing new wall-paintings discovered by Blegen at the Palace of Nestor.
Students on the Peloponnese trip with Director Jack Davis (at right) and Mrs. Eleni Samaraki (far right).
