Agios Georgios is a village and local community of the Municipality of Lasithi Plateau in the Prefecture of Lasithi. Before it became part of the Municipality of Lasithi Plateau, it was a community. The village, which is the second largest village in population on the Plateau and until 1970 the most populous, consists of the settlements of Kato Chorio or Agios Georgios and Pano Chorio or Plathianos or Agios Dimitrios which before 1920 were separate villages, while today they are separated only by a main road that was built on a pre-existing stream in 1950. It is 47 km far from Agios Nikolaos and 60 km far from Heraklion.
According to tradition, Agios Georgios is one of the newest villages of Lasithi and when it was created, residents from the surrounding smaller settlements (Veneri or Klima, Vasilikou, Agia Pelagia and others) also went to live there.
History
Middle Ages
Crete, along with Lasithi, came under Venetian rule in 1211. As the Venetian occupation was unbearable, revolutions broke out constantly with the aim of uniting Crete with Byzantium. The Plateau, due to the morphology of the terrain, was inaccessible, so it was a natural fortress for the rebels. For this reason, in 1340 the Venetians forbade the habitation of Lasithi Plateau, with the penalty of death for violators. Thus, Lasithi remained uninhabited for 120 years and little evidence has survived of that period.
In 1460, Venice decided to repopulate the Plateau mainly for economic reasons, as the area was fertile and would produce large quantities of grain. Thus, the area was given to allottees with the condition that they stay in the area seasonally only during the cultivation in makeshift settlements (metochia).
The villages of the Plateau, including Agios Georgios, resulted from these makeshift settlements.
Initially, as the plateau of Lasithi is a basin, water stagnated and the land could not be cultivated. The Venetians, in order to supply their soldiers and sailors, completed drainage works in Lasithi between 1514 and 1560 and then granted the plain to Venetian settlers and Cretan cultivators as Lassiti (Lasciti), hence the name Lasithi.
Plathianos and Agios Georgios are two of the settlements that were created then by the cultivators who had gone to Lasithi.
In the census of 1583 by the Venetian Castrofilaca, the settlements of Plathianos and Agios Georgios were not mentioned, and in the census of 1630 made by the Venetian Francesco Basilicata, the makeshift settlements of Lasithi had the following population:
- Plathianos: 6 inhabitants
- Agios Georgios: 12 inhabitants
- Avgusti: 10 inhabitants
- Magatzedes Moro: 3 inhabitants
- Veneri (Klima): 10 inhabitants
- Agia Pelagia: 8 inhabitants
In Moro, just outside the settlement of Agios Georgios, the central storehouses of the Venetians, named after the Venetian commander of the same name Moro, were erected during the Venetian period, where they collected the grain and in general, the products of Lasithi Plateau, from where they were transported to Chandakas, capital of the then Venetian-occupied Crete.
Τhe settlement of Avgusti, which according to tradition was deserted after a plague epidemic, was in the wider area of the community of Agios Georgios until 1798. It seems that out of 72 families, only one father and one son survived the epidemic. All that remains from the old settlement is the church of Agios Georgios Avgustis, at the foothills of Kefala (a small hill northeast of Agios Georgios), which is now two-aisled, with the second aisle dedicated to Agios Nektarios.
Another settlement that was deserted and whose inhabitants relocated to Agios Georgios (Kato Chorio) is the settlement of Agia Pelagia. The only thing that survived of this settlement is its church, dedicated to Agia Pelagia, on whose celebration day a festival dedicated to her memory is held.
The village of Plathianos in the census of Francesco Basilicata was mentioned under the name Platianos or Ochra, and according to tradition, its name came from the location of the village on the hill. According to others, the name “Plathianos” probably came from its settler who came from a nearby village named Plati.
19th and 20th Century
In 1879, during the Cretan State, the villages of Agios Georgios and Plathianos along with all the others up to Kato Metochi formed the Pera Municipality (the remaining villages of the Lasithi Plateau formed the Pode Municipality or Municipality of Tzermiadon). In the census of 1881, the village of Agios Georgios had 384 inhabitants and Plathianos 285, i.e. a total of 669 inhabitants. Of these only 2 were Turkish tax collectors.
In the census of 1951, Agios Georgios had its largest recorded population of 1,312 inhabitants and was the most populous settlement in the province, which was maintained until the 1981 census. In the same census it was the first time the two settlements Plathianos and Ag. Georgios were listed as a single settlement, after the merger of the former with the latter, following a ministerial decision of 1944. In the census of 1981, 1,030 inhabitants were recorded in Agios Georgios, while in the other large village of the Plateau, Tzermiadon, 1,060 people were recorded.
In the 1940s, a large building facility was built in the Avgusti/Moro area, which was used to store potatoes, the main export product (along with vegetables) of the Province of Lasithi at that time, owned by the Agricultural Bank of Greece. These building facilities were located approximately where the warehouses of the Venetian Moro were and were demolished in the 1970s.
In 1920 – 1928, after the incorporation into Greece (1912), the neighboring villages of Agios Georgios, Plathianos, Koudoumalia and Avrakontes of Lasithi Plateau, formed the community of Agios Georgios. In 1928, the village of Avrakontes was detached, which along with the settlement of Koudoumalia formed a separate community. In 1998, the community of Agios Georgios was merged into the Municipality of Lasithi Plateau, constituting its municipal department.
Name
The village of Agios Georgios took its name from its church, which was built where, according to tradition, an icon of Agios Georgios was found, which had been transferred there in an unknown way from the church of Agios Georgios in the village of Avgusti.
The church of Agios Georgios
According to tradition, the church of Agios Georgios was built due to a firman and in a single day during the Turkish occupation.
In particular, when the Christians of Lasithi went to the Turkish governor of Crete and asked him to allow them to build the church in question, he told them that he would give them permission to do so if they built it in just one day, because he thought that this was not possible. In order to achieve this, they placed themselves in a single row in the morning, carrying stones hand in hand from the nearby hill of Kefala, and then all together and until nightfall built the church. The said church has been torn down and another, larger, neo-Byzantine-style church has been built in its place.
The church of Plathianos, that is, of the upper neighborhood of the village, is Agios Dimitrios.
The village today
The Municipal department of Agios Georgios has a population of 490 inhabitants according to the last census of 2011, it has a Kindergarten, a Primary school, a Technological Vocational School (which operated in the period 2000-2007), a rural clinic, tourist accommodation and a Cultural Association, the Cultural and Folklore Association of Lasithi Plateau (ELSOL) that has founded and maintains a Folklore Museum. The museum has been housed in an old house since the beginning of the twentieth century exhibiting materials and objects donated by the residents in the early 80s, when the museum was inaugurated, in the old Primary School that was open at the beginning of the 20th century and houses the collection of the politician Eleftherios Venizelos, and two new buildings that house modern material objects, an exhibition of paintings, wood carvings by Vassilis Krasanakis, old books, handicrafts, weapons, and various modern objects. Agios Georgios is the seat of the Mountaineering Club of Lasithi (which has members from all over the plateau and friends who live in Heraklion and Agios Nikolaos). From 1958 to 1962, there was a secondary school in Agios Georgios, Diktaio Gymnasium, a six-grade Secondary Education school, corresponding to today’s three-grade Gymnasium and three-grade Lyceum, while from 1978 to 2000 there was a three-grade secondary school which closed down in 2000.
The region of Agios Georgios also includes the Limnakaro Plateau, located at an altitude of 1,120 m, from which one can head to Spathi (or Entichtis) peak, at 2,148 m, the highest peak of Dikti, or follow the southern path and head to the peak of Afentis Christos (2,141 m), the second highest peak of the mountains of Lasithi. One can reach all of these places if they follow the course of the European trail E4, which crosses Crete from Kasteli Kissamos in the west, passes through Agios Georgios, and ends at Kato Zakros in the east.
Due to the mountainous location of the village and the altitude, the olive tree does not thrive on Lasithi Plateau. Thus, with the end of the Turkish occupation in Crete (1897-1898), the residents of Agios Georgios and Lasithi in general acquired plots of land with olive trees mainly in the provinces of Pediada, Monofatsi and Viannos, and several Lasithians decided to permanently relocate to settlements mainly in the province of Pediada and Monofatsi since the first decades of the 1900s. So, several residents of the villages of Voni, Galatas, Astritsi, Archontiko (Alitzani), Garipa and Partira come from Agios Georgios. However, due to the high birth rates then, the population of the village did not decrease, on the contrary, until the census of 1951 it was increasing.
The population of Agios Georgios began to decrease in the 1970s, as a consequence of urbanization. The new residents moved mainly to Athens or Heraklion for studies or in search of better job opportunities. Due to these factors, the population of the village has been continuously decreasing since 1971, which led to the closure of the Secondary school of Agios Georgios in 2000. As a result of the touristic development of the northern beaches of Crete, a lot of residents of Agios Georgios and Avrakontes moved to the settlements of Analipsi and Agriana Pediados, which are located at a short distance from the touristically developed Hersonissos, areas where their ancestors lived seasonally during the winter months in the past, due to the milder climate of the beaches compared to the mountainous climate of the Plateau. As a consequence, the population of Analipsi rose to 1,300 people in 2011, and the population of Agriana rose to 270 people.
The first Primary School was founded in 1871 in the settlement of Plathianos and closed down in 1937, because it could not accommodate all the students. At that time, students from the villages of Koudoumalia and Avrakonte also attended it. Today it has been turned into the Eleftherios Venizelos Museum. The new Primary School, which is a neoclassical building, is located in the settlement of Agios Georgios (Kato Chorio). In this school initially there were students only from Agios Georgios (in 1954 it had 215 students). Today, students from all the villages of the Municipality of Lasithi Plateau go to school there, because the Primary School in Tzermiadon closed down due to a lack of students and merged with that of Agios Georgios in 2014.
Residents
The village of Agios Georgios is the birthplace of great people of the Resistance, but also of Letters, Culture, Arts and Sciences. From Agios Georgios came the famous priest-Tziritis (Evarestos Tamiolakis) whose parish was the village of Kassanoi Pediados. In addition, Agios Georgios was the hometown of the commander Chatzis Ioannis Klisarchakis during the Turkish occupation, Telemachos Plevris, jurist and MP of Heraklion, as well as Adam Krasanakis, Captain and partner of Captain Bantouvas in the National Organization of Crete.
Before the German occupation, the residents of Agios Georgios were mainly engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, while later many engaged in Letters and Science.
Population trend according to the censuses:
| Census | 1900 | 1920 | 1928 | 1940 | 1951 | 1961 | 1971 | 1981 | 1991 | 2001 | 2011 |
| Population | 900 | 990 | 1200 | 1300 | 1312 | 1284 | 1130 | 1030 | 790 | 640 | 490 |