Andravida

Andravida (Greek: Ανδραβίδα, [anðraˈviða]) is a town and a former municipality in Elis, in the northwest of the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Andravida-Kyllini, of which it is a municipal unit. Its population is about 4,300. The town was the capital of the Frankish Principality of Achaea in the late Middle Ages.

Location

Andravida is located in the plains of northwestern Elis, at about 7 km from the Ionian Sea coast. It is 3 km south of Lechaina, 6 km north of Gastouni, 30 km northwest of Pyrgos and 55 km southwest of Patras.

The Greek National Road 9 (also E55) Patras-Pyrgos-Pylos passes east of the town. The Andravida Air Base is 2.5 km to the east of the city center.

Population

History

Andravida's early history is obscure: the name is of unknown provenance—several proposals have been made, the most probable of which is that it derives from a Slavic name for "place of the otters"—and the site is not mentioned before the conquest by the Crusaders in 1205, even though it certainly existed before that. According to the Chronicle of the Morea, Andravida, like most of the towns and regions of the northern and western Peloponnese, was captured without a fight in 1205 by the Crusader leader William of Champlitte, and it was there that the local Greek magnates and lords of Elis and of the mountains of Skorta and Mesarea paid him homage and recognized him as their lord.

Andravida horse

The Andravida or Eleia Horse is a light draft breed found in the region of Ilia in Greece. It owes its development to the crossing of Anglo-Norman with local breeds with additional crosses of Nonius stallions after 1920. The breed is close to extinction and its stud book was only established in 1995.

The members of the breed are predominantly brown, bay, chestnut, red roan, black and occasionally grey, though, this tends to be a rare phenomenon. The head is rectangular in shape - quite unremarkable and plain with long ears and a straight profile. The chest is broad and heavy-set with thick muscles; the back is slightly dipped; the shoulders should be well-sloped and the croup only gently so. The horse's legs should be free of excess hair, very strong and thick with good bone. The breed's temperament is described as willing but strong. The breed is of moderate height ranging between 14 and 16 hands high with the average being at around 15 hands.

The breed is believed to trace to the cavalry horses of Ancient Greece; in the fourth century BC used by the Athenian Army. In peace times, the breed was used to transport goods from remote villages and for riding. Beginning in the 13th centyuy, Arabian blood was introduced to create the lighter strain of this breed. In the 20th century, Anglo-Norman blood was added, but numbers went into decline. The breed was saved from extinction in the early 1990s, when Andravida's Selle Francais stallion Calin de Nanteuil, renamed Pegasus, covered some mares, resulting in 50 healthy foals that went to breeders throughout western Greece. Despite this, however, the breed's numbers are still very low, and they are rarely, if at all, found outside of Ilia, where they are bred almost exclusively.