On Monday evening, 23 December 1991, at 20:39, a French government plane lands at the military airport of Kalamata. There is no guard of honour, no speech and no Greek minister on the tarmac. A few hire cars drive off into the dark mountains towards the Argolic Gulf. In one of them sits François Mitterrand, President of France. He has come to spend Christmas in Myloi.
A friendship from 1966
The story begins a quarter of a century earlier in Paris. Dimitrios Kotsonaros from Myloi is 23. Because he speaks French, he does his military service at a NATO office in the French capital. Through friends he meets the politician Mitterrand, and they stay friends.
In the autumn of 1991 Kotsonaros gets a request from his friend Christos Machairitsas, a diplomat who had already arranged secret holidays for Mitterrand on Mount Athos, Corfu and Rhodes. Could the president stay with him over Christmas? Kotsonaros films his house and the surroundings with a Super 8 camera. Mitterrand is also shown two luxury villas owned by Greek shipowners. Yet he chooses the simple village house in Myloi. His only condition: nobody may know until he has arrived.
A village without a hotel
Four days earlier, six French security officers arrive. In a small room of 25 m² they set up a satellite link with Paris. Then they walk every path and alley of the village.
The president brings remarkable company. Anne Pingeot, curator at the Musée d'Orsay and his secret partner since 1958, comes along. So does their daughter Mazarine, aged 17, with a friend. Also travelling are his personal physician, his friend and adviser Charles Salzmann, and Robert Badinter, president of the Constitutional Council, with his wife. On top of that come some twenty security men.
Myloi has no hotel, and neither does neighbouring Kiveri. So the security men sleep in villagers' homes. The Kotsonaros family moves in with their neighbour Nikos Koutouzos, who keeps a small farm with animals. Every morning he brings the French president fresh mizithra and oranges from his own trees. His wife Anthoula gives the guests her own headscarf as a present.
Christmas Eve in Epidaurus and Lygourio
Mitterrand knows the region: he had been here thirty years earlier. On Christmas Eve he visits the theatre of Epidaurus. Then he goes to lunch at Leonidas in Lygourio, the taverna where the festival actors eat after their performances.
In Lygourio they already knew something special was coming. A few days earlier Machairitsas had told them there would be "company" on Christmas Eve. A week before, the police had searched the place. On the day itself there were security men with a sniffer dog at the door, and also a journalist with a MEGA camera crew. The family served tzatziki, tiropita, kourabiedes and melomakarona. The president liked the local rozakia best. The fine cake fetched specially from Nafplio he left untouched.
At first no photographs were allowed. Still, as he left he posed with the family, and Leonidas sent him off with olive oil, olives and sweets. The photo still hangs on the taverna wall.
In the afternoon he walks through the old streets of Nafplio. In the evening the host cooks himself, at home in Myloi.
The day the Soviet Union disappeared
On Christmas Day he wants to go to Mycenae. Seeing the Tomb of Agamemnon was, he said, "the dream of his life". But the secret has leaked. At the bridge over the Xerias a car from the TV channel Antenna blocks the convoy. MEGA is on his trail too. The security men take the car keys and leave the journalists by the roadside. The visit to Mycenae is called off.
So on 25 December Mitterrand is back in Myloi, and on that very day the world changes. In Moscow Mikhail Gorbachev resigns and the red flag over the Kremlin is lowered for the last time. In a village house on the Argolic Gulf, the French president sits down in front of the French flag and reads a statement over the satellite link. Then he does what he does every day: he walks through the village lanes, among the olive and orange trees.
"Be proud of where you come from. Greece gave the world its civilisation, and Argos is the cradle of all Greece."
Mitterrand to Dimitrios Kotsonaros (free translation)
To Kotsonaros, his guest seemed more like his own simple father than one of the most powerful men in Europe.
Argos, Corinth and a print by Fassianos
On 26 December he visits Ancient Corinth and Acrocorinth. Then he goes to the rock-cut theatre of Argos. He calls it a masterpiece and regrets how neglected it is. He wishes that Argolida and Nafplio might one day become European Capital of Culture.
In the afternoon he receives the mayor of Argos, Dimitrios Papanikolaou, and the council of the Myloi community at the house. The mayor gives him a numbered print by Alekos Fassianos. A good choice: Mitterrand is a friend of the painter and already owns his work.
The last supper in Malantreni
On the last evening the party drives to Malantreni, a wine village in the hills north-west of Argos. They eat at the taverna of Kostas Dedes: tiropita, olives, beetroot (the president's favourite), pichti, trachanas, rooster in sauce with hilopites, and local wine. As they leave, everyone is given a bag of hilopites, trachanas and olives, as is the custom in a Greek village.
The secret of Myloi
On Friday 27 December at 16:29 Mitterrand flies from Kalamata back to Paris. For his host he leaves a signature and 10,000 francs for a good cause. Kotsonaros gives the money to the old people's home in Argos.
Only later did it become clear how special this week had been. That the president had a second family was a French state secret in 1991. The public only learned of it in November 1994, when Paris Match published photographs of father and daughter. A Greek newspaper did write in December 1991 that the rough treatment of the press had to do with the "unusual composition" of the party. Hardly anyone understood then what that meant.
Three years before France knew, the president spent Christmas with his secret family in Myloi, with oranges and mizithra from the neighbour. The village kept the secret.
The house today
The Kotsonaros family house in the hills above Myloi is now a holiday home, Pontinos Old House. Its stone walls, wooden beams and family heirlooms still look much as they did when the president spent Christmas there.
The week at a glance
- 23 December: arrival at Kalamata at 20:39, by night to Myloi
- 24 December: Epidaurus, lunch in Lygourio, walk through Nafplio
- 25 December: Mycenae blocked by the press; Gorbachev resigns; statement from Myloi
- 26 December: Corinth, theatre of Argos, reception of the mayor and village council, dinner in Malantreni
- 27 December: departure from Kalamata to Paris at 16:29
Sources
- Γεώργιος Α. Γιαννούσης, «François Mitterrand», Αργολική Αρχειακή Βιβλιοθήκη Ιστορίας και Πολιτισμού, 20-06-2023: argolikivivliothiki.gr. Citing Greek daily and weekly papers of December 1991 to January 1992 (including Ελεύθερος Τύπος, 27-12-1991, and Ποντίκι, 31-01-1992, after Le Canard enchaîné) and Greek Diplomatic Life, January 1992.
- Φώτης Απέργης (ed.), «Η Κάλλας, ο Μινωτής, ο Κουν και τα μαγειρευτά της Κάκιας», Ελληνογερμανική Αγωγή, 2020, «Ροζάκια για τον πρόεδρο Μιτεράν», pp. 60–63.
- To Vima (Vimagazino), 03-07-2020: tovima.gr; Grace / To Vima, 2024: tovima.gr/grace; Πρώτο Θέμα, 30-06-2020: protothema.gr. Articles about the Leonidas taverna and the photo book.
- On the MEGA crew, recollection of journalist Eirini Nikolopoulou: eirinika.gr.
Photos: Kotsonaros family collection (Myloi), partly via argolikivivliothiki.gr, and the Liakopoulos family archive (Leonidas taverna, Lygourio). Published with permission. Do you have memories of this week, or photos? Let Visit Myloi know.