EOKA hideout of Palechori Oreinis
The EOKA hideout of Palechori Oreinis is located in the center of the homonymous village of Nicosia in Cyprus.
Next to the church of the community of Palechori Oreinis, Panagia Chrysopantanassa, in the basement of Andrea’s and Maritsa’s Karaoli house is still preserved to this day the hiding place of the EOKA hero, Gregory Afxentiou.
In the summer of 1956, Grivas Dighenis ordered the rebels to be kept in the homes of ordinary people for greater security. Thus, the EOKA hideout of Palechoriou was built with the suggestion of the fighter himself by the rebels Georgios Matsis, Leonidas Stefanidis and Antonis Papadopoulos, in collaboration with Andreas Karaoli and the technical assistance of Spyros Michaelides. Afxentiou kept in secret the entrance to his hiding place and the existence of the second hideout, even though many of his rebels and allies were at times hiding in the village.
The restoration of the EOKA hideout of Palechori Oreinis, as it is today, was carried out in 1997 by the “Historical Remembrance Council of EOKA 1955-59” and under the architectural supervision of the architect Ioannis Aristodemos, while the rooms of the hideout were donated by the Karaoli family and were united with the house-donation of Eleni Anastasi Papamichail and her heirs. The EOKA hideout of Palechori Oreinis was in fact a complex of two hideouts, one under an oven, and the other beneath a stone-built ladder that was right next to the oven. More specifically, at the door of the hideout there were stones stuck together, which together made out a single wall. The connection of the hiding place with Afxentiou’s room in the elevated ground floor the house was made by a movable staircase, through a hole in the floor.
Today, the EOKA hideout of Palechori Oreinis is open to the public, is a unique spectacle and gives visitors the opportunity to take a look at the historical past of the island of Cyprus. In this museum space, the visitor can read more about the Karaolis couple, the heroes that passed from the hideout and fell in the field of honor, as well as regarding the field of action of Grigoris Afxentiou and the bloody fights of the period of 1955 -1959.
Grigoris Afxentiou often lived in the area of Palechori Oreinis in order to run large parts of the provinces of Nicosia, Limassol and Larnaka, and during the nights he was the guard, since his room was located right behind the village police station, where the English soldiers were sometimes stationed. Indeed, after the battle of Zoopigi, (1957), the wounded Afxentiou returned to Palaichori to get medical help, and at the same time began his search by the British soldiers, who never managed to find him. Since 1955, when he assumed the post of Deputy Mayor of the geographical region of Pitsilia, he fell in battle on 3 March 1957.