Hotel’s Heritage
A place of history dating back to 1730!
The initial stone house was built in the 18th century (1730) and belonged to the Noutsos Family. During this time it was used as a permanent residence. What is now the restaurant housed the kitchen and sheltered the family’s livestock. The reception area housed the living room and the bedrooms. The cellar which can be seen through the glass floor in the reception area was used for storing and maturing the family’s cheese, which was made from the village’s milk as well as their own wine.
Many of the articles decorating Hotel Princess Lanassa date back to that period of time. The house was handled down from generation to generation. During the Second World War it became the permanent residence of Anna and Dimitrios whose main residence, in the city of Ioannina, had been requisitioned by the Italian invading Forces. It became their sanctuary away from the bombings and the Italian and subsequent German occupation. Aristotelis, the son of Dimitrios donated the house in 1960 to the community.
At that time, the village was almost uninhabited with only the old remaining. The young had all left to find work in the cities. He subsequently rescinded the donation in 1976, due to the general poverty of the area, the community’s lack of funds and its inability to make the necessary repairs to upkeep the building. He therefore, made the necessary repairs himself and kept the house in the family.
From then onwards, it was used as a holiday home, a healthy mountain retreat away from the hot summers of city life. In 1996, the house was declared by the Greek National Tourism Organisation as an Example of the Vernacular Traditional Architecture of the area. In 1999, the stone house was restored and a new section was constructed to open its doors to the public, as Hotel Princess Lanassa in April of 2001. The hotel took its name after the second wife of King Pyrrhos of Epirus.