Vamvakou is a village on the western side of Mount Parnonas in Laconia. It takes just under 3 hours to get there from Athens, around an hour from Tripoli, an hour and a half from Kalamata Airport, and only 50 minutes from Sparta.

The village had once had over 200 students attending the there school in the 19th century, but lately, it followed the fate of many places in mountainous Greece, deserted with boarded up or half-destroyed houses, and fewer than 10 permanent residents and now not a single pupil. In 2018, the Social Cooperative Enterprise (SCE) “Vamvakou Revival” was founded with the aim of bringing sustainable development to the village. It was formed by a group of friends, originally from this part of Laconia, who associated the village with the happy summers of their childhood. The project continues to receive financial and moral support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation as Vamvakou was the birthplace of Stavros Niarchos.

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Four years after the foundation of Vamvakou Revival, the village looks quite different, as Haralambos Vasilakos, one of the Vamvakou Revival co-founders told Travel.gr. – ‘The café- restaurant “Voureiko” was created, the guesthouse “Rouga tis Vamvakous” was built, the village’s traditional accommodation was renovated, hiking and cycling trails were opened, the redevelopment of Vamvakou’s playground was completed and, of course, the school was transformed into a space where educational programs, cultural events, and innovation workshops take place, the V. Lab (Vamvakou Technology Lab). In addition, the Vamvakou Agricultural Cooperative ‘Parnon Poèma’ and the Vamvakou Women’s Cooperative ‘Vamvakia’ have already been established –in fact, our first products, walnuts, chestnuts, and olives, will become available on the market very soon,” he adds.

source travel.gr