Ozolimni

On a hill above the seaside hamlet of Xiropotamos, near Ierissos in Chalkidiki, stand the sorry remnants of a tower and a few monastic buildings. This was one of over seventy defensive towers that guarded the dependencies, or metochia, of the Mount Athos monasteries scattered across the peninsula. The tower of Ozolimnos belonged to the Xiropotamos monastery, and Athonite documents show the land had been in its hands since at least the fourteenth century, when the tower was probably raised. The name is the curious part: Ozolimnos means "stinking lake," a reference to a coastal swamp of some 500,000 square metres that once lay nearby. Today the condition is rather poor, with little more than the tower's outline and scattered walls to suggest its former purpose. The swamp has gone, but the odd name lingers, as does the sense of a busy monastic estate reduced to a few stones above the sea.