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Hotel Omonia - Katsaros family

(Historical review, photos, plans for the future)

The construction of the “OMONIA” hotel, in 1938, resulted from the need to serve the users of the Agiasmata thermal spring.

The need to provide modern bathing facilities and accommodation was imperative, since bathers until then had bathed in the thermal water in improvised troughs around the spring or, at best, in rudimentary facilities (improvised cement baths) in some of the few small accommodations that existed.

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Historical review

In this sense, the “OMONIA” hotel was innovative. Along with the provision of modern accommodation facilities for the time (double rooms, shared toilets on each wing and floor, two shared kitchens, 1 oven and shower in the bathing areas), the hotel had two individual baths, with modern bathtubs, so that the bathers to be fully serviced with their thermal baths within the hotel.

The thermal water was transported from the source located at a distance of about 200 meters, with the help of animals, stored in a special tank and channeled to the individual bathers after being mixed with cold thermal water to reach the desired temperature, according to the medical instructions for each bather.

Architecturally and spatially, the hotel, when it was erected, with plans by the NTUA civil engineer, Adamantios Saliaris, smoothly joined the hillsides and can, without exaggeration, be described as a tasteful architectural specimen in the Agiasmata area at that time. Together with the house of G. Kaloutas, who was the manager of the antimony mining company’s quarries, they were the two buildings that, built in a traditional way and with respect for the environment, dominated the coast of Agiasmata, one on the right and the other on the to the left of the river Arvanos. The Kalutas house, unfortunately, was left to collapse, after the mines were abandoned.

Το σχέδιο αναβίωσης

Having strong childhood memories and experiences of the hotel and Agiasmata, since I spent almost all the summers of my childhood there, participating in the carefree children’s company, I have reduced the revival and reopening of the hotel to a life’s work. Certainly on new, modern bases. It is a promise I have made to myself and to all those guests who passed by and loved the hotel and the Valley of Agiasmata.

My vision is the creation of a modern small unit, which, with absolute respect for the preservation of the tradition and form of the building, will offer thermal tourism services, on a modern basis.

The omens for such a unit in Agiasmata are good. Agiasmata is the only source of thermal water on the island of Chios and can develop into a small center of thermal tourism, thermal baths, treatment, prevention, rehabilitation, healing, wellness and rejuvenation for visitors.

Spa tourism is an alternative form of tourism that includes, in addition to traditional hydrotherapy, other applications based on thermal water and in some cases in combination with seafood, which aim at healing, restoring and caring for the physical and mental health and general well-being of the visitor (heating, spa, etc.).