The monument of the EOKA fight 1955-59, is found in a forest region
at the top of mountain "Egklisi", between the villages Kato
Amiantos and Pelendri of Pitsilia, a region in which bloody conflicts
took place at the period of the EOKA fight. It is a multifunctional
monumental work, dedicated to every person that was involved in the
EOKA fight: to the protagonists, to the heroes, to the fighters, to
the victims and to the entire Cypriot population, which with its energetic
support, contributed in the success of the fight.
Particularly the monument honors those who gave their life to open
the way towards freedom. With the construction of the monument the
Greek Cypriot population paid its debt to the heroes, as it was written
by the leader of the EOKA fight General Georgios Grivas Digenis, just
before he left Cyprus after the agreements of Zurich-London. He wrote:
« I am sorry for not been allowed to visit the graves of our dead
people and to kneel in front of the greatness of their sacrifice.
Cyprus owes, for respect to them and also for teaching the coming
generations, to set up a tall monument equal to their glory, somewhere
at a high mountain, very high, so that they embrace with their look
all Cyprus and Cyprus embraces them back, and at a place where they
left their blood, because the heroes must have such a place for bed
and shroud ».
The concretisation of the monument was done by the Council of Historical
Memory of the EOKA fight 1955-59, that immediately afterwards its
foundation in 1993, it assigned to the architect Chari Fereo, the
development and supervision of the work.
The central idea of the monument sprang from the verses of the last
hero of gallows, Evagora Pallikaridi.
" tha paro mia aniforia
tha paro monopatia
na vro ta skalopatia
pou pan stin lefteria."
The monument is constituted from various departments, natural and
artificial, that are linked together to glorify the freedom of Cyprus
and the fight of EOKA. At an area at the top of the mountain, it is
found the Monument of Freedom and the Chapel of Virgin Mary Eleftherotria.
At another area, roughly one kilometer below the top area, they are
found the porticos and the room of the fighters.
A conjunctive ring between these two basic synthetic parts of the
monument is the Steps of Freedom (skalopatia tis lefterias). There
are 108 steps equal to the number of the heroes of the EOKA fight
that gave their lives for the freedom of Cyprus, which were shaped
in an uphill path of 650 meters, that passes through a forest region
that connects the area of the porticos with the Monument of freedom.