Kleisoura

The Kleisoura tower, also known as the Kazarma, stands as a rather poor ruin on a low hill just south of Frangouleika, above the Rio-Agrinio road at the northern mouth of a dramatic three-kilometre gorge. This pass, flanked by vertical rocks now popular with climbers, is thought to be the "Cycneia Tempe" mentioned in Ovid's Metamorphoses. It long carried the main route from Messolonghi to Agrinio, making it a prime spot for ambush when brigandage flourished. The name Kazarma, from a Venetian word passed into Turkish meaning a central outpost, suggests a military role, though the tower's history is otherwise obscure. The French traveller Raoul de Malherbe noted two ruined towers here in 1834, though only one survives today. A photograph from the 1890s, however, shows a tiled roof, large windows and a distinctly domestic appearance, more a mansion than a fort. It was likely an eighteenth-century Ottoman landowner's residence, later abandoned and pressed into service as a guard post, then renovated and reused before falling into its present decay.