Qualla: Anthochori, Arcadia https://qualla.com/anthochori-arcadia en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:40:35 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Anthochori, Arcadia https://qualla.com/anthochori-arcadia Anthochori, Arcadia: Introduction https://qualla.com/anthochori-arcadia/ To the ancient Greeks, Arcadia was a pastoral paradise — the word itself became synonymous with rural innocence in the European imagination. British photographer Stuart Franklin went looking for that idyll in the Arcadian valley south of Megalopoli and found something else entirely: a village being systematically erased by excavators to reach the brown coal beneath it. The photograph he made of Anthochori's last standing church — balanced on a tall column of earth while the surrounding ground was scooped away — appeared in Time magazine on 17 September 2008. By November of that year, the church was gone too.

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/s/anthochori-arcadia-wp/sqxs-anthochori-arcadia-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Anthochori, Arcadia: A Village in the Valley of the Alpheios https://qualla.com/anthochori-arcadia/ Anthochori — the name means 'flower village' in Greek — sat about three kilometers south of Megalopoli, in the broad valley of the Alpheios river. It was a small, self-contained community of farmlands and lanes, with neighboring villages to the east, southeast, and southwest. Gre...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/s/anthochori-arcadia-wp/sqxs-anthochori-arcadia-a-village-in-the-valley-of-the-alpheios.mp3 0:06 2 full Anthochori, Arcadia: The Mine Arrives https://qualla.com/anthochori-arcadia/ Lignite — brown coal — had been extracted in the Megalopoli basin since the 1970s. Greece derives a significant portion of its electricity from lignite, and the Megalopoli power plant complex was among the country's largest energy installations. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the o...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/s/anthochori-arcadia-wp/sqxs-anthochori-arcadia-the-mine-arrives.mp3 0:06 3 full Anthochori, Arcadia: The Last Church Standing https://qualla.com/anthochori-arcadia/ Until late 2008, one structure remained. Anthochori's main church, dedicated to the Presentation of the Virgin to the Temple — Τα Εισόδια της Θεοτόκου — stood at the center of the former village. The demolition workers were not willing to destroy it. And so, as the earth around a...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/s/anthochori-arcadia-wp/sqxs-anthochori-arcadia-the-last-church-standing.mp3 0:06 4 full Anthochori, Arcadia: What the Erasure Left Behind https://qualla.com/anthochori-arcadia/ The demolition of Anthochori generated several disputes that outlasted the village itself. Questions about the disposition of at least €280,000 in compensation funds for the community's public property — transferred to the Municipality of Megalopolis — were still being raised as ...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/s/anthochori-arcadia-wp/sqxs-anthochori-arcadia-what-the-erasure-left-behind.mp3 0:06 5 full Anthochori, Arcadia: Arcadia from the Air https://qualla.com/anthochori-arcadia/ The area where Anthochori stood lies at approximately 37.367°N, 22.133°E, in the Alpheios river valley south of Megalopoli in the Arcadian interior. From the air, the opencast lignite mine is unmistakable — a vast brown scar in an otherwise green landscape, its terraced working f...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/q/x/s/anthochori-arcadia-wp/sqxs-anthochori-arcadia-arcadia-from-the-air.mp3 0:06 6 full