The Kardamili Jazz Festival at the Leigh Fermor House  

For the first time, the Leigh Fermor House participated in the Kardamili Jazz Festival 2022 by hosting at the House’s garden three concerts by Live Foyn Friis and Bård Helgerud, Knut Hem and the Pandhandle Stringswing Band. The Embassy of Norway in Greece, in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, offered a reception at the House in honour of the musicians and contributors of the Festival.

Online Lecture by Professor Roderick Beaton

Within the framework of the honorary fellowships at the Patrick & Joan Leigh Fermor House, Professor Roderick Beaton Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature at King’s College London gave an online lecture titled British Philhellenism from Lord Byron to Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Abstract: Between 1821 and 1827, volunteers known as ‘philhellenes’ arrived in Greece from all over Europe and even from faraway America, to take part in the Greek Revolution, or ‘War of Independence’. While the conflict lasted, more than 1,000 individuals took part in the armed struggle as volunteers. Some became disillusioned and left again, others lost their lives, either in battle or from disease. The casualty rate was devastating – and the toll included the most famous of all the foreign volunteers, Lord Byron, who died at Missolonghi in Western Greece in April 1824. The talk will follow Byron’s progress from the young Romantic poet of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), who travelled in Greece between 1809 and 1811, until his fateful decision to dedicate himself to the cause of Greek liberation in 1823. In the final part of the talk, it is proposed that the nature of philhellenism had changed perceptibly by the time of the dramatic activities of Patrick Leigh Fermor in Nazi-occupied Crete in 1944; but that the builder of the house at Kardamili, no less than Byron, had been simultaneously a man of letters and a man of action.

The lecture was given in Greek and was broadcasted live from the Leigh Fermor House in Kardamili on 14/05/2022.

To watch the lecture, click here.

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Online lecture by Professor Hartmut Leppin

As part of the ongoing collaboration between the Benaki Museum / The Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor House and the Center for Modern Greece (Centrum Modernes Griechenland / CeMoG) of the Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin), Professor Hartmut Leppin, Department of Ancient History, Goethe University Frankfurt (Goethe-Universität), gave an online lecture under the title From Robbery to the Pirate Empire: Pirates in Ancient Greece from The Leigh Fermor House.

The lecture forms part of a conference organised by the Goethe University Frankfurt at the Leigh Fermor House in April 2022.  

To watch the lecture, click here

Kardamyli Festival 2021

From the 8^th to the 12^th October 2021, the Kardamyli Festival took place at the garden of the Leigh Fermor House. Τhe participant speakers were: Joshua Barley, Natalie Haynes, Edith Hall, Judith Herrin, Tom Holland, Bettany Hughes, George Manginis and Yiannis Palaiologos.

The Kardamili Festival is organized with great success by the British author James Heneage and his wife Charlotte.

Mani through the Senses

A site-specific walking performance project in the landscape of Greece's Mani region, with artists’ interventions in and around the House of Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor.

The project is part of “Seeing with the Senses”—the Benaki Museum's monthly access programme for visitors who are blind or partially sighted.

In a typical Mediterranean landscape of cypresses, olive trees, fragrant shrubs, white oleanders, wild flowers--as well as the extraordinary acoustical coastline and surrounding mountains near Kardamyli village, a group of both sighted and partially sighted participants participated in a three-hour "walkshop" in May 2021. Developed through a series of virtual or physical exchanges as well as preparatory workshops with local community members during the past several months, the event will include short performance pieces and hands-on interactions inspired by passages from Fermor's writing about the natural and cultural landscape of the Mani. The participatory walk will explore multi-sensory dimensions of the building's architecture and grounds, allowing participants to share unique insights gleaned from their collectIve journey and reflect on their distinct forms of embodied knowledge.

This intimately scaled, performative experience was documented in a video by Eirini Steirou.

The project was curated by Lydia Matthews and Fotis Flevotomos and the guest artists are Vassiliki Spachou, Fenia Papadodima, George Palamiotis and Eirini Steirou.

Community Partners:
Panhellenic Association of the Blind in the South Peloponnese
Cultural Association for Art & Nature "NARTURA"
Kardamyli High School 

The performance is produced with the support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development.

To watch the project’s video, click here