Guide of Eastern Macedonia & Thrace

The architecture of the Pomak residence belongs to a wider Northern Greek architectural type. It has a rectangular shape, a long front part and it is bi leveled. The basic construction materials for the ground floor that is used as an agricultural storage room and for animals also, are wood and stone. The floors are destined as residencies and for some productio’s stages. The residencies are expanding linearly with the same typology, when the number of the co habitants increases. The stone walls of the buildings have no daub, the floors are made of tsatmades (daubed walls with woven branches or wooden pales connected with lime mortar and amplified with straw or goat hair) and often they have sachnisia (closed balconies). The roof has two or four sloping sides with Byzantine type tiles, open at the chagiati (roofed level’s extension) and without a ceiling, just like the floor of the level underneath. The chagiatia and sachnisia are characteristic of this bioclimatic architecture which is enriched with chimneys with exceptional endings.

Source: M. Gianopoulou-Roukouni, “Pomak villages. Construction, materials and technology as reparative factors influencing the form of the residence”. Thrakika Chronika, v.38/1983, Xanthi