Andrítsaina

Andritsaina clings to a hillside in mountainous southeastern Elis, near the borders of Arcadia and Messenia and northwest of Mount Lykaion. The Alfeios forms the northeastern boundary of the surrounding municipal unit, where forestry and small-scale farming are the predominant uses of the land. Roads through the mountains link the village with Krestena, Megalopoli, Tripoli and Pyrgos.

Tradition derives the name from Andrikaina, the wife of a Cretan shepherd who first kept an inn by a spring on Lykaion. The settlement flourished during the Frankish period of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and appears in the Chronicle of the Morea. It later played a crucial role in the Orlov Revolt and the Greek War of Independence, while Ibrahim Pasha’s troops destroyed the village in 1826.

The village also lies six kilometres north of the Temple of Epicurean Apollo at Bassae.