Plaka Philoxenia
Aunt Moschoula’s house
It is about a traditional house of Milos, consisted of the ground floor main residence and a basement which includes the house’s water tank (cistern).
It is adjacent to the Achaelogical Museum (neoclassical building of 1870, which was designed by Ernest Chiller, the famous architect), but also to the old Feminine Primary School of Plaka (built in 1875).
The house was built about the age of 1885, from the elder Perros Coliarakes (“Macres“) and was provided to his daughter Moschoula, as part of the composed dealed dowry (1933) with Christos Drougkas, as a husband of Moschoula, which was formed by notary Christos Procopeas.
It happened to be the family house of aunt Moschoula, into which the hole family of elders Perros and Helene was grown. There is where twelve children were born, but only six of them finally lived: Antonis, Moschoula, Giorgos, Ergina, Giannes and Pape.
In the basement, the family used to stock agricultural products (olive oil, cheese, grain, dried beans) and there was the place where the traditional furnace was constituted. The communication between the basement and the ground floor was provided by a wooded ladder and an opening in floor (“clavani”). At the same time, the few domestic animals were hospitalized in certain developed spaces into the basement. The back yard communicated with a ladder to a side little road (“calderimi”), which led to the northern side of the neighborhood.
On the ground of the basement, there was the opening of the cistern (“sterna”), where the rain water was collected for drink or to be used for domestic needs.
This house, has been one of the houses of the wide family of elder Perros, which were built next to each other, in order to the family bounds to be kept and for the needed social life of the relatives to be continued.
Women were working on their everyday domestic affairs, helping each other, while their men were away to their works. The close, but also, the wider family formed a solid core, which everybody owned to help and protect. At the same time, their meetings at the yards, during the nightfall for talking (“veggera”) have been moments of entertainment and relaxation from the plenty of the manual day works.