Folklore Museum of Kasos

At the Mavrikakis House, in the picturesque Arvanitochori, time seems to have stood still: wooden ceilings with painted decorations, pitchers, wine presses and everyday objects compose a faithful image of how a Kassio family lived decades ago. The Folklore Museum is not just an exhibition of objects — it is a house that has come to life.

The Folklore Museum of Kasos is housed in the Mavrikakis House, in the village of Arvanitochori, in a building that previously operated as an olive press. The interior maintains the typical neoclassical style of the era: the hall and the corridor are dominated by wooden ceilings with elegant decorative elements and paintings, giving the space a stately, yet at the same time intimate, atmosphere. The museum represents a traditional Kasos house through two main rooms — the bedroom and the hall — which are furnished and decorated according to local tradition.

These spaces display everyday objects from earlier times: oil lamps, gas burners, food storage jars, as well as olive presses and olive stones that directly refer to the building's past as an olive press. The choice of these objects is not accidental; it captures a rural and domestic everyday life closely linked to the cultivation of olive trees and the self-sufficiency that characterized life on the island for generations.

A museum made with passion

The Folklore Museum is not the result of some grand, organized institutional design, but the product of the love and concern of the island's own inhabitants for the preservation of their local identity. Its operation in a real, old house —instead of a modern exhibition space— gives it a much more personal and experiential character, complementing in its own way the Archaeological Collection and the Fry's Maritime Museum: where those tell the story of Kasos through ancient finds and naval relics, the Folklore Museum tells the same story through the simplest, everyday life of a home.