Kounoupia is a mountain village in Southern Kynouria, built on the slopes of Mount Parnonas at an elevation of 770 meters, near the border with Laconia. The village stands out for its lush natural surroundings, featuring walnut trees, plane trees, and firs, as well as for its traditional architecture, with its stone-built, sparsely arranged houses overlooking the Peleta Plateau. Kounoupia belongs to the so-called “Kounoupochoria” (Village of Kounoupia), along with Peleta, Amygdalia, Pigadi, Vlisidia, and Chouni, forming a group of mountain settlements with shared historical and cultural characteristics.
Historically, Kounoupia has been a major village since the period of the Ottoman Empire, a fact that attests to its importance for the wider region. After the establishment of the Greek state in 1835, it was officially recognized as a separate settlement and designated as the seat of the then-municipality of Mariou, while in 1912 it became the seat of the community of the same name. Its distinctive architectural and historical character has also been officially recognized, as it has been designated a traditional settlement since 1998.
An important religious and cultural landmark of the village is the Monastery of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, a remarkable monument featuring a cruciform basilica, a marble iconostasis by the sculptor Perakis, and iconography by Fotis Kontoglou. The icon of the Virgin Mary in prayer as a young girl holds a special place among the village’s treasures. Today, Kounoupia, together with Chouni, forms the Local Community of Kounoupia within the Municipal Unit of Leonidio, retaining to this day the character of a small but historically and culturally significant mountain settlement.
Nikos Kokkalis designed the stamp for the community of Kounoupia
Νίκος Κόκκαλης
Find the stamp at the Church of the Holy Monastery of Panagia Kounoupia
Please contact Chrysa Helioti by calling 6934019392
He was born in Corfu in 1966. From 1984 to 1989, he studied at the School of Fine Arts of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in the painting studios of Dimitris Kontos and Vangelis Dimitreas, from which he graduated with honors. From 1993 to 1995, he was a domestic graduate fellow of the State Scholarships Foundation, under the supervision of Professor Nikos Kessanlis. In 2006, together with Marilena Koskina, he founded the OKKO group, with the aim of raising public awareness through art. In 2016, he was awarded a Ph.D. from the Department of Audio-Visual Arts at the Ionian University. Thesis title: “LIGHT AND INSTALLATIONS—The Use of Minimal Natural Light Sources in Interactive Video Installations,” supervised by Marianna Strapatsaki. Since 2017, he has been teaching in the Department of Audio and Visual Arts, where he also heads the “Avarts Theatre” theater group at the Ionian University. Since 2023, he has been a member of the visual arts group “Koinós Tópos.” He has held eleven solo exhibitions and created over twenty-five set designs.
His work straddles the boundaries between installation art and the performing arts, while his research focuses on the poetic documentation of the traces of human existence, transforming familiar interior spaces into unfamiliar ones and creating extreme balances within them.
