Dennis Verrios
A vivid blue Milky Way rising above dark mountain ridges, with red-lit shrubs in the foreground and the orange glow of a town below, near Dimitsana, Arcadia, Greece. Photograph by Dennis Verrios.

Arcadia, Greece

Milky Way over the mountains near Dimitsana

Photograph by Dennis Verrios

The Milky Way rises over the ridges near Dimitsana, my mother's village, with the warm glow of a town in the valley below.

Dimitsana stands high above the Lousios gorge, on the site of ancient Teuthis, and its history runs deep. During the War of Independence its water-powered mills made gunpowder for the revolution, earning it the name 'the Nation's powder keg'. Its library, founded in 1764, still holds around 35,000 books, manuscripts and documents, and the town was home to two churchmen at the heart of 1821: Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople and Germanos, Metropolitan of Old Patras.