The story of Venus Hill began one day in August 2001, when  Harris, a man I have known since he was six years old, brought us up to this spectacular piece of land and showed us the top of the hill. Overwhelmed with endless views towards the ocean and mountains, we quickly thought to ourselves, that this might be it.
But land purchase in this remote area is not as easy than it is in the States or the rest of Europe, since ownership has not been recorded, but rather verbally contracted by generations of elders who would divide the land and give it to their heirs. Therefore it is not uncommon to have land disputes, where borders were determined by a piece of rock or an undistinguishable tree.
Further more, the inheritance of land through generations enlarged the amount of people who own a certain piece of land tremendously and  decreased the size of land each individually owns proportionally making an agreement to anything  almost impossible. The size of land has to be at least 4,000 sq.meters
(=1 acre) to be able to build on, which  the government will soon be increasing to 8 or 10K.
So it came to our fortune, that this particular piece of land belonged to three brothers who I have known for more than 20 years and to whom I had the trust and comfort to make such a purchase possible. After the typically haggling we agreed on a purchase price based on one stremata which equals the size of 1,000 sq.m or 0.2 acre). The next step was to have the land measured and recorded into the public records which resulted in the final purchase price and a small land dispute which was resolved

after finding a reputable architect, who built several beautiful houses and even a church in the area we started to put our ideas on paper. The seemingly insurmountable task to start from scratch gave us a challenge we had not encountered previously. After presenting the first idea and discovering the fun of drawing, it was quite a challenge to bring all the aspects, law requirements, needs and opinions into one place. But after tens of meetings, sketches, drawings, computer models and Greek historical design discussions we finally arrived at our house on Venus Hill.
The final plan should be ready shortly after which the building permit process will start and that means wait......, so in the mean time, let's plant some olive trees!

The first olive tree

Our transportation

by a village tribunal, no guns allowed. An ad was put in the local newspaper regarding the size, borders and ownership about this particular land. Any objections had be brought forward in the next three months after the right of ownership became final. The forest department had to determine, that there was no forest at the time or prior to 1940, any seeds or forest like tree would have prevented permission to build on this land . So it was handled the Greek way: prior to the visit of the forest department a bulldozer followed by a tractor was brought in to destroy any possible evidence of such growing and it was declared, that the land has been used for agriculture to explain the non-existing growth of trees or bushes. Never mind the freshly plowed earth!
Many papers had to be filed and signed, but finally on  March 14, 2002 Venus Hill became ours and the next step began…..story to be continued…….

Church in Mariou
built by Stefanos