Piana doesn’t look like a village built for tourism. It’s a scatter of stone houses on the Menalon foothills, quiet enough that a digital nomad could work here for a week and barely hear a car. Which is exactly why, a few years ago, one family decided the village’s real asset wasn’t a beach or a monument — it was the people who still knew how to do things the old way, and simply hadn’t been asked to share it. That decision became Project Pan.
Underground and uphill
Some of it is pure geology and altitude: a descent into Kapsia Cave, one of the region’s lesser-known limestone chambers; a night at the Menalon Mountain Refuge at 1,600 metres, above the treeline; a ride on the century-old Odontotos rack railway through the Vouraikos Gorge, one of the strangest and most scenic train journeys in Greece.
The people who still do it by hand
The rest of Project Pan runs on first names, not brochures. Traditional pie-making with Yiayia Asimina. A cheese workshop with the Sinanis family. A farm morning with Giannis and Olga in nearby Karyes. An afternoon with Panagiotis and his beehives. A tasting at the Kalogris family’s biodynamic winery. None of it is staged — it’s simply Piana’s own households, opening their kitchens and fields to whoever asks.
History, on foot
Piana also sits close to real 1821 history: a hike through Limpovisi, one of the Greek Revolution’s lesser-told chapters, and the village’s own Traditional & Folklore Museum, alongside the War Museum of Tripolis. For those who’d rather move than read, there’s the “Run the Village” trail experience, horse riding through the forests of nearby Elati, mountain bikes for exploring the Menalon Trail’s tracks, and — for something longer — the full 15km traverse of the Lousios Gorge.
And when August comes
Like much of mountain Arcadia, Piana keeps its own summer rituals — an open-air cinema under the stars (Cine Piana), and a village-wide celebration every August 15th that has nothing to do with visitors and everything to do with the village remembering itself.
GOOD TO KNOW
Project Pan is run out of Hotel Papanikola, the Triantafyllidis family’s guesthouse in Piana — the natural base for arranging any of the above, from a cave descent to a cheese-making afternoon.
