To identify the settlements photographed in 1900, I relied on old maps and contemporary accounts, including a book about the Vlachs published around the time Milton and Ianaki Manakia took their photographs: The Nomads of the Balkans. An Account of Life and Customs among the Vlachs of Northern Pindus, by the British scholars Alan Wace and Morice Thompson. After discovering the Vlachs by chance, Wace and Thompson abandoned their archaeological work to explore this lesser-known and historically intriguing Romance-speaking community. Some descriptions in this exhibition are drawn from their book, as it reflects the circumstances of the Manakia brothers’ photographs.
About Metsovo, Wace and Thomson note: “The town consists of two parts, one on either side of a deep ravine. The larger and more important portion is called Serinu, Sunny, and the smaller is known as Nkiare, Sunset. Metsovo presents the curious anomaly of a worn-out village which is still decaying, but which nevertheless possesses a group of public buildings far superior to those of any of its more prosperous neighbors. These are all due to the generosity of a number of its sons, particularly George Averoff.”
The Ottoman garrison and a mosque, now gone, were still present in Metsovo at that time.
The photograph was taken by the Mankia brothers from Nkiare, the place where the Manakia family apparently originated, as their paternal great-grandfather was born there.
