Asomatos at the Mouth of the Kourtaliotis Gorge

Asomatos and the Kourtaliotis gorge

Anyone driving south from Rethymno who leaves the narrow, wind-lashed Kourtaliotis gorge behind sees the country open out quite suddenly: ahead lies Asomatos (Ασώματος), a village on the southern slopes of Kouroupas (984 metres), about 27 to 28 kilometres from Rethymno and some seven kilometres from the Libyan Sea. It stands at a good 220 metres above sea level and now has only around two hundred inhabitants. Here the road divides: one branch runs west to Plakias, the other leads to Preveli Monastery, to the palm grove at the river mouth and on to the south coast. The two monastic complexes of Preveli – the ruined lower monastery of St John the Baptist, Kato Moni, and the working upper monastery of St John the Theologian, Piso Moni – even belong administratively to the local community of Asomatos.

From the village the eye travels over extensive olive groves, which owe their regular appearance to a large-scale consolidation of holdings and an irrigation scheme. Asomatos has kept its tourism within modest bounds – some places to stay, tavernas and shops – but continues to live chiefly from farming. It is known for its many churches, for the memory of the Tsouderos family and for the private museum of history and folk life, the Papageorgoulakio.

The chapel of St Nicholas Kourtaliotis

Deep in the gorge, beside the springs of the Kourtaliotis, stands a small medieval chapel of St Nicholas Kourtaliotis. It comes under the parish of Asomatos and remains one of the best-known places of pilgrimage in the south of the Rethymno district; its feast is kept on 1 September. A long flight of steps leads down from the Koxare–Asomatos road, which here runs more than a hundred metres above the river bed; at the bottom waterfalls roar, and the bed of the Megas Potamos, the “Great River”, has its beginning – one of the few streams in Crete that never run dry. The gorge itself is only about two kilometres long, but its walls rise sheer for several hundred metres, and griffon vultures, eagles and the occasional lammergeier ride the air currents above them. The steps are steep and can be slippery near the water, and the climb back to the road is a stiff one in the heat of the day.

The Tsouderos family and the history of Crete

Asomatos is the home of the Tsouderos family, which played a notable part in the Cretan struggle for freedom and in the political history of Greece. Melchisedek Tsouderos, in the world Michail, was abbot of Preveli Monastery and a member of the secret society Filiki Eteria; in 1821 he raised the flag of revolt on a height above the monastery – an act for which the monastery was destroyed and had afterwards to be rebuilt – and fell early in 1823 in fighting in western Crete. His kinsman Georgios Tsouderos led the insurgents of the district as a captain in the same rising. Emmanouil Tsouderos (1882–1956), a scion of this Asomatos line, was born in Rethymno, read law in Athens and economics in Paris and London, sat in the Cretan assembly from 1906 and, after union with Greece, in the Athens parliament, served as a minister under Eleftherios Venizelos and from 1931 was governor of the Bank of Greece. He became Greek prime minister on 21 April 1941, after the German invasion had begun and his predecessor Alexandros Koryzis had taken his own life, withdrew with the government to Crete and then to the Middle East, and headed the government in exile in London and Cairo until his resignation in April 1944. He died at Nervi in Italy.

The Papageorgoulakio museum

Asomatos has the private museum of the priest Michail Georgoulakis, whom everyone in the village knew simply as “Papa Michalis”. Over some six decades he gathered whatever had to do with the history of the place and with everyday life in Crete: household goods and furniture, tools, books and documents, decorations and ecclesiastical objects, together with pieces from the Ottoman period, from the two world wars and from more recent Greek history. The collection is housed in the family’s restored house, built in the traditional manner – so that the visitor sees not merely individual objects but the whole setting of a Cretan village household. It fits easily into a day spent at the gorge and the monastery.

Churches and early mentions

Besides the church of the Archangel and the Holy Bodiless Powers, whose bell tower is said to have been kept hidden from the authorities in Ottoman times, the village and its surroundings possess a whole series of other churches: Agia Anna, Agios Ioannis Prasinos, Agios Georgios, Agios Ioannis Theologos and the church of the Transfiguration of Christ in the locality of Talierades. Among the long-established families, apart from the Tsouderos, are the Kallergis, Galonakis and Georgoulakis.