About two and a half hour outside Athens there is a place so beautiful that there is no way for anyone visiting it to imagine – unless they already know the story – that it took a terrible disaster to create it.

Lake Tsivlou in Achaea is one of the most charming places in the Peloponnese and at the same time a place with a special history.

We arrived there from the provincial road Akrata-Zarouchla. We found ourselves at an altitude of about 750 meters in front of a gorgeous landscape with dense forests.

The sun was gleaming on the lake’s smooth surface; nothing betrayed the spectacular and violent events that took place here a little more than a century ago.

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Sylivena, 1913: a semi-mountainous village of Achaia, full of life, inhabited mainly by farmers and stockbreeders.

The village was accustomed to small landslides, very common in the area, but in the winter of 1912-1913 there was a particularly serious one.

The disaster that gave birth to the lake

On 24 March the whole village was awakened by dense tremors and vibrations.

The villagers made a wise decision to flee, trying to save what they could of their livestock and property. A few hours later, disaster struck.

Houses were washed away by huge amounts of soil. Sylivena no longer exists, and the houses in the lower neighbourhood of the village of Tsivlos (which eventually gave its name to the lake) were also covered by soil.

Fortunately, the number of victims was minimal. In fact, according to the most popular version of the story, 4 people died. Large amounts of soil blocked the bed of Krathis River, whose waters were trapped in two large basins.

One of them no longer exists, as its natural dam was destroyed by the river’s waters the following year.

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