Elata

Elata is situated on a semi-mountainous region, up on a rocky hill; on the hilltop, just south of the village, there are three old windmills that can still be seen today. The village is situated quite far from sea, but has a sea view over the Aegean. Elata’s location and architectural structure hint at fear of pirates that used to disembark on the coast during medieval times and until the Turkish Occupation, and raided the villages. Elata has partly preserved the pattern of a “village-castle”. Seven older settlements of the Byzantine era were unified to create the village-castle of Elata, probably around 1300 A.D. That time, villagers used to raise partridges, a kind of wild bird, something that is no longer practiced here. The name of this village is believed to have derived from “elate, elate” (=come) that people called out to the inhabitants of the surrounding settlements in order to come and lock themselves into the village-castle when men from the watch-towers warned of pirate-ships landing on the coast.