Just a few kilometers from the Greek-Albanian border and well hidden between Mount Kasidiari and Sossinou Hill is the village with the current name of Ano Parakalamos.
A village that hosts barely 25 permanent residents during the winter months.
And yet this small village in the past hosted both the mother of Suleiman the Magnificent and the most famous of Hurrem's wives.
The fights between these two women literally went down in history and there were not a few times when Suleiman had to separate them in order to normalize the atmosphere inside the palace.
The reason that Pogdoriani was chosen as the "place of exile" of these two women is one and clear. It was considered a very safe place to host such personalities even if they were actually in exile.
In essence, Suleiman could never exile even Hurrem who was also the mother of his four children and much more his own mother.
In essence, he had anointed as his mother's despotate the entire wider area of Pogdoriana, which includes the present-day villages of Parakalamos, Ano Parakalamos, where the center of the Despotate, Paleo Mavronoros, was also considered (today it is abandoned and its inhabitants live in the new Mavronoros ) and Sitaria villages which today together with some others make up the Municipality of Kalamas.
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Pogdoriana experienced a huge economic boom and was considered a center of trade. The inhabitants of the region enjoyed the freedoms they had from Valide Sultana and maintained both their religious freedom and that of preserving their language.
However, towards the end of the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, the place was looted and set on fire by groups of guerilla bodies that existed in the Turkish-occupied Epirus and were in agreement with the Epirus Company.
The rebels successfully faced the Turks, who were forced to retreat, without being able to take the necessary actions and save the valuables and money of the time that were in the residence of Valide Sultana. And as it was learned later, several wounded Turks and perhaps some dead were loaded into carts for Ioannina. There were no casualties from the rebels, neither dead nor wounded, because they fought from advantageous positions on the surrounding heights where they knew very well.
This resulted in the evacuation of the village (after its second burning its inhabitants abandoned it and created today's Parakalamos which is also the central village of Pogoni with approximately 1,000 permanent residents according to the last census (although in reality it is very less since most of its inhabitants are elderly today and many of them are no longer alive).
So this created a huge myth that exists to this day and many believe that a large piece of the treasure that existed in this particular village in the house that belonged to Valide Sultana is still well hidden in some part of the village.
In fact, it is not uncommon for residents to see strangers wandering around their village for a few days and then disappear.
In fact, some have not hesitated to buy for a hefty fee one of the remaining houses of the village, abandoned or not, and then demolish them. In fact, it has been observed that some of them return them without compensation to their original owners.
Pavlos Melas the Macedonian warrior originally from Ano Parakalamos.
The family of Pavlos Melas came from Parakalamos, but he himself was born in Marseilles, lived in Athens and fought sacrificing his life in the fight for the freedom of Macedonia.
It is characteristic that the ruins of Michail Mela's father's ancestral home are preserved to this day and are located at the exit of the village towards Paedonia.
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