Antiperato Monument

Five kilometers west of Fry, on a quiet coast away from the noise of the capital, lies the spot where—according to local tradition—the destruction of Kasos began in 1824. The Antiperatos Monument marks exactly this place, the moment when the fate of the island changed forever.

The Antiperatos Monument is located about five kilometers west of Fry, in the area where, according to the prevailing local version, the Turkish-Egyptian and Turkish-Albanian soldiers who destroyed Kasos in 1824 landed. Unlike the monuments of Fry, which honor the memory and the battle within the city, this monument marks the exact starting point of the destruction — the moment when the fate of the island was sealed, before the battle even reached the center of Fry. It is a more remote, austere monument, but perhaps the most poignant precisely because of this geographical precision: it stands where the event happened, not where we remember it.

The story surrounding Antiperatos is closely linked to one of the most charged stories of betrayal in the island’s folklore. According to it, an old servant named Zacharias—employed in a Kassian household—pointed out to the attackers the unguarded area of Antiperatos, thus enabling them to disembark without resistance and «step on» the island, paving the way for the utter destruction that followed. This name is still debated in Kassos to this day, although the historical accuracy of the accusation has never been definitively confirmed; it remains, however, an integral part of the way the island narrates to itself the events of that spring.

A date with many versions

It is worth noting that the sources do not fully agree on the exact date of the landing on Antiperato and the ensuing disaster: the official narrative of the Municipality mentions the appearance of the main Egyptian force on 27 May 1824, other sources place the landing on 29 May, while a significant number of contemporary articles—including those published for the 200th anniversary of the event, in 2024—use the date 7 June 1824 as the official «anniversary» of the «landing» of the island. This variation is not unusual for oral events of two centuries ago, and does not change the essence of the narrative: within a few days in May-June 1824, thousands of soldiers landed on Kasos and annihilated the resistance of Kassian and Cretan fighters, leading to one of the greatest tragedies of the Greek Revolution.