Mani Peninsula - Geography

Geography

The terrain is mountainous and inaccessible. The name Mani is originally thought to have come from the Venetian word Mano meaning hand, but this was due to the Venetians having built a castle called "Castle De Le Maina" by hand. Linguistically the name Mani originates from the Greek word "Manîa" (Mανία), meaning "crazed" or "wild." The English word "mania" evolved from this, although it coincidentally sounds similar to the Venetian mano.

Until recent years many Mani villages could be reached only by sea. Today a narrow and winding road extends along the west coast from Kalamata to Areopoli, then south to Akrotainaro (the pointy cape which is the most southward soil of continental Greece and continental Europe) before it turns north toward Gytheio.

Mani has been traditionally divided into three regions:

• Exo Mani (Έξω Μάνη) or Outer Mani to the northwest,
• Kato Mani (Κάτω Μάνη) or Lower Mani to the east,
• Mesa Mani (Μέσα Μάνη) or Inner Mani to the southwest.

A fourth region named Vardounia (Βαρδούνια) to the north is also sometimes included but was never historically part of Mani. Vardounia was a region between Mani and Laconia that was occupied by Turk-Albanians during the Ottoman occupation of most of Greece.

Administratively, Mani is now divided between the prefectures of Laconia (Kato Mani, Mesa Mani) and Messenia (Exo Mani), in the periphery of Peloponnesos, but in ancient times it lay entirely within Laconia, the district dominated by Sparta. The Messenian Mani (also called aposkiaderi, a local expression meaning "shady") receives somewhat more rainfall than the Laconian (called prosiliaki, a local expression meaning "sunny"), and is consequently more productive in agriculture. Maniots from what is now Messenian Mani have surnames that uniformly end in -éas, whereas Maniots from what is now Laconian Mani have surnames that end in -ákos; additionally there is the -óggonas ending, a corruption of éggonos, "grandson".