Vranas Olive Press Museum - Converted Factories on Waymarking.com

The Vranas Olive Press (www.vranasmuseum.gr) was built in 1887 in the village of Pappados of the Gera region in the south of the island of Lesbos. Vranas Nicolaou, who built it, was also the grandfather of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Odysseas Elytis.
The Olive Press followed the currents of time, from the Ottoman Occupation to the Liberation of 1912, the exchange of populations and the influx of refugees after the 1922 debacle in Asia Minor, the 1940-44 German Occupation and the ensuing 1945-49 Civil War, until 1963 when Michael Vranas, another grandson of Vranas Nicolaou, realised that the changes at the olive-oil market had made it difficult for the Olive Press to continue in the mode that he followed. He rented it out and it continued operating until the beginning of the 1980s when it closed for good.
In 1997, the non-profit cultural company 'Archipelagos' (www.eteria-archipelagos.gr), led by the acclaimed late film director Nikos Koundouros, the famous architect & Parliament Member/Minister Nikos Sifounakis and the renown verse-composer Lefteris Papadopoulos, bought it in a state of ruins and renovated it reinstalling whichever machinery pieces had been lost and converted it into a Museum.
Its architectural style is truly worth the visitor's time as Lesbos in the last period of the Ottoman Occupation and the first period of its Liberation flourished due to the great number of merchants dealing in the international scene (Constantinople/Istanbul, Adramytti?n/Edremit, Odessa, Burgas, Varna, Alexandria, Napoli, Marseilles and others) and the island developed its own particular sub-school of architecture with interesting creations both in houses (mansions) and in industrial buildings.
The Museum offers to organised groups (with prior notification) the opportunity to witness the whole production process from the very first stage of the crushing of the olives to the final storing of the produced olive-oil. The Museum's shop offers high-quality bottled olive-oil from select local producers, amazing soap made of olive-oil and books by Odysseas Elytis and Evrydiki (Roura) Sifneou and is contemplating the production of its own olive-oil at another olive press to be sold under the 'Vranas Olive Press Museum' brand name at the shop and at selected venues.

Address:: Olive Press st. Pappados, Lesbos GREECE GR 81100 Year built: 1887 Year converted: 1997 Web page: [Web Link]

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