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Abandon hope, everyone who enters here.

This is what Dante wrote above the gates of his fictional hell. As long as humanity has existed, people have been haunted by the question of what will happen to a person after death, especially what awaits a person as retribution for his atrocities.

I would like to say how many peoples, cultures, there are so many models of hell. And this is not entirely true: not only every nation, but also every person has his own model of hell, reflecting his idea of ​​who should be punished and for what offenses.

The first ideas of hell appeared in ancient Egypt: according to legend, a deceased person went to the court of the god Osiris. Osiris placed a human heart on one scale and an ibis feather on the other. If a person's evil deeds outweigh the feather, then Osiris throws the heart to a monster with the body of a lion and the head of a crocodile.

Here we do not yet see cruel and perverted punishments for sins during life. But in ancient Greek Hades, kingdom of the dead, a picture of more refined retribution is observed. For example, the myth of Tantalus, a rich king, favorite of the gods. During his life, he often climbed Olympus, feasted with the gods, and considered himself equal to the gods. For this, after his death, the gods cruelly laughed at Tantalus. In the kingdom of the dead, he was constantly tormented by hunger and thirst, but as soon as Tantalus leaned towards the crystal clear water of the spring, the spring disappeared, and as soon as he stretched out his hand for the ripe fruits on the branches, the branches rose high, high. But not only hunger and thirst tormented Tantalus, eternal fear was added to them: a huge rock hung over Tantalus, ready to collapse on him at any moment.

In Greek and Roman mythology, the gods punished a person not only after death, but sometimes during life, they could turn him into some kind of monster, etc.

It is noteworthy that in pagan beliefs it was not criminals and sinners who went to hell, but... ordinary people, everyone except the warriors. After death, warriors found themselves in a very peculiar paradise, where they spent their nights in merry feasts and their days in battles. In ancient times, such a picture of the world was pleasant to our warlike ancestors; later, with the development of agriculture and cattle breeding, the peaceful peasant began to look for less aggressive religions. For example, Christianity.

Most of all fantasies were generated by the myth of Christian hell and Christian demons of retribution. Christians believe that sinners will face “eternal torment” in hell. And they will see the corpses of the people who have departed from Me, for their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched, and they will be an abomination to all flesh. In the Bible, for example, there is a legend about how the Virgin Mary, after her death, asked the angels to show her hell, alternately flew with the angels to the north, south, east and west of hell, and saw the torment of sinners. Mary asked the angels why people were being tortured like this, asking for mercy for them. But the angels talked about the atrocities of sinners, and the Virgin Mary said: “According to their faith, they will be rewarded.” Thus, slanderers in hell were hung by the tongue, false witnesses had their mouths filled with fire, lazy people lay on beds of fire, women who had abortions were breast-fed by snakes. Nevertheless, the Virgin Mary begged God for the right for sinners to rest from torment once a year.

The legend about Christian hell gave rise to many followers - writers, poets, artists. Suffice it to recall Hieronymus Bosch, a master of depicting the most unimaginable monsters of hell. In his hell, people are crucified on musical instruments, naked sinners are entwined in a frantic dance with terrible demons, people are eaten alive by rats. Bosch especially hated gluttons and drew a sophisticated punishment for them: a huge monster with the head of a bird and a cook’s cauldron on its head devours gluttonous sinners and defecates them into the abyss. Greedy people in hell Bosch vomits gold coins, murderers vomit blood, etc.

Christian devils played pranks not only in hell, but also in the world of the living, and sinners were punished not only for obvious atrocities, but also for careless words. There is a legend about a girl who vowed to marry one guy and said, let the devils take me if I deceive him. But the beauty’s heart is prone to betrayal, and soon the girl married someone else. At the wedding, a man in black approached her, invited her to dance, picked up the girl, flew through the air with her, turning into a demon. A couple of days later, the demons returned to the girl’s house, brought her wedding dress and veil, and said that they were only supposed to take the sinner, and that they were returning her clothes.

Another man invited many guests to his house, prepared food, but the guests could not come. Then the owner exclaimed in his hearts, so let all the devils come to me! After some time, horsemen began to come to his yard, enter the house, and dog, cow and pig heads began to poke out of the windows of the house. human bodies: It was the devils who came. They drank wine, treated themselves to a laid table, and for a whole week no prayers could drive them out of the house.

In German folklore there is a legend about a wild hunter: a count who was distinguished by a ferocious disposition. One day he went hunting, killed a herd of cows along the way, killed a shepherd, destroyed a monastery in the forest, etc. The retribution was terrible, the count suddenly found himself alone in a dark forest, without his subjects, he could not scream or call for help. The earth opened up, crowds of demons burst out of hell and chased the hunter. At night they run across the dark sky, during the day - underground, and so on until the end of time.

Sometimes a person manages to fool demons and leave them in the cold. One peasant's wife was a witch and flew to the Sabbath. One day the husband asked his wife to take him with her. At the Sabbath, the guests sat down at a laid table laden with delicious dishes, but all of them were prepared without salt, since demons do not eat salt. The peasant said that he was a man and could not eat without salt, and that very minute they handed him a salt shaker. The guest exclaimed - Thank God, here is the salt! Everything is right here devilry disappeared, the man found himself alone in an open field, in an unfamiliar country, and then it took three months to get to his home.

Each person imagines hell in his own way: the torment of hell, sins for which one should be sent to hell. So Dante very cleverly and wittily punished all his enemies and ill-wishers by writing The Divine Comedy. In it, Dante describes in detail what punishment he wants to subject this or that enemy to.

In the first circle of hell - Limbo - the souls of unbaptized infants and pagans, for example, ancient Greek poets, philosophers, etc., languish.

The second circle is a whirlwind that carries around the souls of people who have been subjected to immeasurable passion.

In the third circle, the souls of gluttons toil in the mud in the rain; in this circle, Dante placed his late friend Chacko.

In the fourth circle spendthrifts and misers hang around, Dante places many cardinals there.

Lazy and angry people toil in the swamp of the fifth circle.

In the sixth circle, heretics are burning in their coffins, where Dante sends Farinata, his political opponent, to suffer.

There, in the sixth circle, Pope Anastasius, whom Dante recorded as a heretics, suffers.

In the seventh circle, tyrants and robbers are boiling in a boiling stream of blood; Centaurs shoot at them from the shore with bows.

In the eighth circle, Dante punishes pimps and seducers, they are whipped by horned demons, flatterers - they sit in a mass of sewage, as well as confessors who traded in church positions: their legs, engulfed in flames, stick out of a stone wall. Soothsayers and sorcerers are toiling around there, with their necks twisted.

However, Dante's descriptions of hell are not only terrible, but sometimes also funny: Dante talks about boiling tar in which bribe-takers are boiled, they are tormented with hooks by mischievous devils so as not to stick their heads out. Dante gives the devils funny names: Slant-Winged, Ruffnut, Dog Itch, Bad-tailed, etc. The devils make faces, make obscene jokes, in the end two devils fought for the right to hook one sinner, and they themselves fell into the tar. :))

Next, Dante shows the hypocrites, who were dressed in heavy lead clothes. Thieves who get bitten Poisonous snakes, Dante places an acquaintance of the thief Vanni Fucci there, he stole the sacristy and accused another of the theft.

Dante also punishes treacherous advisers, turning them into talking flames. Punishes alchemists with eternal itching, for example Master Adam, who mixed copper into gold coins.

In the ninth circle of hell, Dante shows the icy Lake Cocytus, where people who betrayed their loved ones were frozen. Dante also places the villain Alberigo there, who was not yet dead at that time. But Dante says that his body still lives, but his soul has already been cast into hell for many sins.

Finally, at the bottom of the deep crater of hell, Lucifer, the ruler of hell, sticks out of the ground. He has three heads, three mouths, in each mouth he holds a sinner: Cassius, Brutus and Judas. Dante says that hell appeared when Lucifer fell from heaven to earth, overthrown by God, and made a deep crater in the earth, on the slopes of which the worlds of retribution were located.

Most interesting picture hell seems to me to be the worlds of retribution in the picture of the world of Daniil Andreev. In the book “Rose of the World” Andreev writes about Parallel Worlds, light and dark, surrounding our material earth, builds a unique picture of the world. It is interesting that Andreev combines ancient legends (Heaven, Hell, expulsion of dark angels) and concepts modern science(multidimensional worlds, energy, alien characters, etc.) Unlike Dante, who did not deny that he was writing a libel, Andreev assured that he really saw parallel worlds, spirits, demons, communicated with them, and went into a trance. At night, in prisons and camps, Andreev traveled in his sleep to other worlds, then wrote down his impressions, hid them from his jailers, and miraculously sent his notes to freedom.

According to Andreev, the soul of a sinful person becomes heavy, while the person is alive, the material body supports the soul on Earth, like a float. But after death, the sinful soul begins to descend into dark worlds.

The souls are dragged to hell by the guardians of karma, creepy rectangular creatures with dog faces, very smart, but insensitive and merciless. Andreev writes that these creatures arrived on Earth from other planets from which dark forces were expelled.

The first layer of hell is called Scrivnus; those who during their lifetime paid too much attention to the material and too little to the spiritual are placed here. Skrivnus is a series of gloomy barracks, surrounded by a wall on one side and the sea on the other. Sinners spend all day doing meaningless, monotonous work, polishing broken dishes until they shine, mending torn rags that no one needs, etc. People get jobs from monsters who throw things over the wall.

Sometimes a black ship appears on the horizon, moored to the shore, and takes into its hold people who will descend to the lower circles of hell.

The next circle of hell is called Ladref, here people are punished for lack of spirituality and lack of faith. A person remains completely alone, but feels the invisible presence of other people in their tracks.

Ladref is followed by Morod, the kingdom of darkness and silence. Soil and plants are weakly phosphorescent. A person is left alone with himself, again and again relives the memory of his earthly atrocities, and is tormented by the pangs of conscience. Some soils serve as food, and something like luminous clothing, similar to rags, appears around a person’s etheric body.

A person enters the next layer of hell - Agr, as if falling into a quagmire, a black swamp sucks him deeper and deeper. In Agra, amid the black vapors under the dark sky, the likeness of earthly cities glows. In Agra, one color predominates, not even red, but infrared, which a living person is not able to see. Sinners in Agra become like pygmies, gnomes, with naked ugly bodies, they feel constant shame for their squalor. The food here is mold on the walls of houses. But not only shame torments them, but also fear: huge predators live in Agra - volgras, baggy, loose, with gray spongy skin, with empty eye sockets, without a mouth. Volgras suck their victims through the pores of the skin. However, in cities there are buildings where Volgras do not fit, where sinners can hide for a while: these are temples. Volgrs have not two, but three sexes, the male individual copulates with a neuter individual, she carries the embryo for some time, then passes it on to the female.

The one who was devoured by the Volgr is reborn in a lower layer of hell - Bustvich. The body of a person in Bustwich resembles feces, which are devoured by huge white man-worms; the person seems to rot alive, but does not rot completely.

Below Bustvich is Rafag, where traitors and those who served the tyrants for their own gain are punished. In Rafaga, people are tormented by the agony of eternal, continuous exhaustion.

Shim big is a slow flow under the high arch of the tunnel. The souls of sinners lose their resemblance to people; they look like dark brown wisps. Here people are tormented by shame for their atrocities during life and the fear of falling into the stream, being carried along with the current to the lower worlds.

Below Shim-big is Dromn, a punishment for atheists, for those who during their lifetime believed that nothing would happen after death. So the sinner receives this very “nothing” - an endless emptiness, non-existence, in which only the consciousness of a person remains.

Little by little, the sinner realizes that he is sinking somewhere lower and lower, and now he sees an endless reddish glow far below. This is the next layer, Fukabirn, hot magma. Below Fukabirn is Okrus, the viscous bottom of Fukabirn, in which etheric body the person becomes like a metal ball. People who condemned the innocent, tortured the defenseless and children end up here. It is not for nothing that Andreev so severely punishes those who condemned the innocent, because he himself was thrown into Stalin’s camps for no reason at all.

Beneath Okrus is Gvaegr, the still magma, and Ucarvair, the raging magma. Those who perverted lofty ideas and deceived millions of people are tormented there (in my opinion, a direct allusion to Stalin, whom Andreev condemned for his own suffering).

Andreev sends Yezhov and Beria, as well as Malyuta Skuratov and Robespierre to Propulk, the solid magma under Ukarvair. Under Propulk there is superheavy magma Yrl.

Next come the dark worlds located in the core of the planet. These are Biask, hopeless caves in which devils torment sinners, and the human body resembles an animal. In Biasca, those who seduced many people from the righteous path are punished.

Below Biask, sinners toil in Amiuc, vertical cracks, here they are punished for deliberate sadism on a huge scale. Near Amiuts - Ytrech, the kingdom of eternal night, Ivan the Terrible served his sentence in Ytrech.

At the very bottom of the layers of hell there is a special layer, Zhursch, created personally for one person - Judas.

Below, near Zhurshch there is Sufetkh, Andreev also calls it the world cemetery. Here are souls who persisted so strongly in evil that their own fundamental principles, monads, turned away from them and went to God to look for a more worthy soul. And without a monad, the soul (shelt) does not live, it slowly dissolves into non-existence. The spark of consciousness glimmers to the end, and the extent of its torment exceeds the imagination of the demons themselves. For example, Jules de Ratz, a sadist who bathed in baths of the blood of the children he killed, was imprisoned there.

In addition to worlds of retribution, Andreev shows worlds created by demons and for demons. Digm is a two-dimensional world where the devil lives, whom Andreev calls Gagtungr. The devil seems to lie in a purple ocean, spreading his black wings in the light of the violet sun. Gagtungr takes the minions of evil into his layer, for example, Torquemada. Beyond Digm is Shog, a multidimensional world where only Gagtungr himself can enter to communicate with Lucifer himself.

In dark worlds there is also a one-dimensional world, the Bottom, the density of which is comparable to the density of extinct stars, white dwarfs. Sinners and demons who have fallen to the Bottom must constantly climb up the one-dimensional world so that they are not pulled down to the Bottom of the galaxy, where time itself stops, and from where there is no way out. The bottom of the Galaxy is located in the region of the star Antares, where “bottoms” are found dark worlds all planets.

In our time, the theme of worlds of retribution has long migrated from religion and philosophy to literature, cinema, computer games; what once aroused horror in the hearts of people now will only arouse slight interest. People have not been afraid of sin for a long time; they live under the slogan “take everything from life.” And yet, ancient legends make us stop in the race of everyday life, look back, think about what will happen to us next, there, on the other side, and what if...

I'm already 25 years old. How long ago? God knows, I don't remember. Maybe it’s been fifteen years since I woke up thinking “it’s another fucking new day.” And then I see the calendar and it gets even worse - I’m still so young... For some reason, my mind - I don’t want to say “soul”, I don’t believe in it - has aged much faster than my body and this disproportion is killing me. No desires, no aspirations and dreams, no will - that’s what I have become. However, I’m lying – I have one desire. Come home from work and collapse on the sofa, connect to the laptop like a flash drive, and “stick” it into the monitor until the battery runs out.

On weekends, however, I have a mandatory walk - I go to the window and look out at the street. The open window brings to me the smells of the street and the voices of people. Disgusting. Children scream, adults shout at them, other adults shout at these adults... Everyone screams. People.

They deliberately throw themselves into the jaws of difficulties and worries, and then complain about life. I live alone and I'm fine. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I lived with someone else. Settle next to yourself a factory for the production of ambitions and demands, while investing your strength, nerves and money in this “factory”? So that later it would also bring an incredibly unprofitable, unprofitable “branch”. A screaming, stinking, snotty branch that will make me look sixty by the time I'm forty. And instead of gratitude, I will end up receiving a voucher to a nursing home, nutritious bean soup and two phone calls a year.

Damn it, it’s better to look out of the window at the imperfections of the external world, while minimizing the imperfections of the internal world. Although the outside world has become so disgusting that you can listen to post-rock without a player, just by going outside.

“The convicts of the leper colony of the year,” as the classic rightly noted. We live in shabby old barracks, which ceased to be houses about thirty years ago, we eat all sorts of rotten meat mixed with chemicals that we are stuffed with in supermarkets that boast of “first-class products.” Neither give nor take - cockroaches. And these cockroaches run around, they don’t know what they want and they spread the infection. I’m not talking about some kind of virus - that’s a separate topic. The infection here is worse. Anger. This is the scourge of humanity.

Sting harder, hit harder - and you will be happy. You can very well build your own happiness on someone else’s misfortune. Yelling, hitting, injecting, hooking, throwing dirty tricks is more beautiful than any drug. Handing out jabs to everyone, raking them back, snapping and cursing each other, we return home at the end of the day and sob - what has become of this world? Why is he so cruel?! Oh, if only the world were kinder... Oh, if Petrovich from the next department died...

They think they have salvation. They constantly console themselves that by making a cross with a gesture and whispering something absurd, they will receive protection and wealth from the omnipotent invisible man. And if they stood for ten minutes with pasty faces in front of the image of some blessed Marfusha, then they are pure, like children.

Oh, you bald devil, your cataract has burst, your house has burned down, lousy brute, curses on your bald head! Sorry, thank you! Forgivenspas? Thank you!

I don't remember much from my childhood. I do not know why. Individual fragmentary moments float to the surface from the whirlpool of past years, but they are non-specific, even now I cannot distinguish which of these happened and which I just dreamed one day. I remember one thing for sure - always and everywhere they pushed and hammered into my ears one “truth” - there are scoundrels and scum all around, filled with the desire to fool me and kick me in the ass. To prevent this from happening, you need to be gloomy, rude and distrustful of everyone. And you – that is, me – will be happy. The main thing is to bite more painfully and spit more often - and then everyone will be afraid of you, and therefore respect you. At one time it seemed to me that this absurd nonsense was instilled not only in me. Now I understand that this has been and is still being taught to everyone. Happy is only the one who rows for himself, without putting other people's interests into mind, being the standard of vileness.

The more evil, the more happiness...Hmm. Shouldn’t they all go with such a worldview?

It’s strange, but they are just like me. We are the same. We think and want the same thing. Or we don't want to. And we worry about the same things. But we still don’t want to unite. And sometimes it seems to me that I have seen these faces before. Once upon a time, a long time ago. But I can't remember where. Many of them seem painfully familiar and familiar to me. So sometimes you want to go up to a person, hug him and say: “It’s you! Finally! Incredible! I never thought I’d see you again!” But who is it? Nonsense. Empty.

How tired I am. “We need to sell!”, “We need business!” How can? Society of Traders. And who will produce? Build, create? Why did everyone suddenly decide to exchange “joint creation” for “sole destruction”?...

It’s as if TV and the Internet have conspired - they seem to hate me about as much as people hate each other. Blood, murders and funny laughs about asses, feces and gays...Are you serious?! In your opinion, that's all it takes to modern man to feel happy?!

People, where did you come from?! Where do you get so much filth and nonsense from?! What kind of place is this anyway? How did I end up here? I wonder if there is a world where everything is as it should be? Good friends, selfless, trusting each other and ready to gladly help in difficult times...I...I should be there. I know I don't belong here. And I know that this is why I now hear the wind in my ears, I see how quickly the earth is approaching... Much faster than my days went before. I’m curious, maybe it’s better “there”?...

A bright flash of light hurt my eyes. I loudly and convulsively inhaled the air with the smell of iodine, alcohol and bandages. My heart is pounding, my head hurts and I feel nauseous.

Discharge! The pulse has appeared!

He woke up! I woke up!

I see my closest and dearest beings - my wife and son - throwing themselves on my chest.

Dad! “You’re alive!” the son shouts and climbs on me, crushing me with his hooves and almost gouging out my eye with his horn.

His wife's light green curls tickle her nose, and her neck becomes damp from her tears.

A doctor, a young beige unicorn in a white coat, approaches the bed. He looks tired, stressed, but happy.

Mister Cloudwing, you’re alive after all!,” he says, smiling tiredly, “What are you doing?” Don't you know that flying in a thunderstorm is dangerous?

“I know, of course,” I answer guiltily, hugging my family. What else should I answer?

Today is your second birthday!, - the doctor continues, - Do you know about clinical death? So, another couple of minutes and your brain would have died. We pulled you out of the other world, you know... By the way, do they write the truth about the afterlife? “How’s it going there?” he asked jokingly.

Fragmentary, indistinct visions vaguely reached consciousness.

It's lousy out there, Doc. But there are more than enough acquaintances.

“Abandon hope, all who enter here” - this phrase is becoming more and more popular in society, it is mentioned jokingly, or when they want to “show off” their intelligence, without actually knowing either its purpose or even where it came from. Let's start with the original source.

Initially, it was possible to read about “Abandon hope, everyone who enters here” only in the Revelation of John the Theologian, the last book of the New Testament. It is here that the second coming of Christ, the apocalypse and the apocalyptic battle are first mentioned, when people will see rain of fire falling from the sky, the dead will begin to rise and Hell will come for people - earthly sinners, they will be erased from the light and a new era will begin.

Let's continue with a more modern and well-known source in foreign literature, namely the immortal work of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) “The Divine Comedy”. In this work, the writer wrote what a journey through the afterlife could be like. In his work, Dante divided afterworld into three parts - Hell (where sinners languish), Purgatory (for those who atone for sins) and the seven-spherical Paradise (for purified souls). It is in the “Hell” part, the third song, that we are talking about the gates of hell, which are crowned with the inscription “Abandon hope, all who enter here.”

The work is written in Italian, and this phrase in it sounds like: “Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch"entrate.”

There is another world-famous fact of using the phrase “Abandon hope, ye who enter here.” We all know about the tragic times of the Second World War and the pain and death they brought with them. In 1933, the first concentration camp was opened in Germany, in which not only people were involuntarily held, but also the most terrible medical experiments were carried out. Hundreds of thousands of people died from inhuman experiments on their health and life. The concentration camp in Auschwitz became famous for its torture; it was above the main entrance that there was an inscription promising suffering, pain and death to those entering - “Edem Das Seine” (Abandon hope, all who enter here).

In this article I described known cases application of this phrase, which suggests the conclusion that it is not worth simply saying it.

Abandon hope, everyone who enters here.
From Italian: Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch\"entrate. Literal translation: Abandon all hope, you who enter here.
From the “Divine Comedy” (“Hell”, canto 3) by the Italian medieval poet Dante Apigieri (1265-1321) - inscription on the gates of hell. A. S. Pushkin (novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”, chapter 3. stanza 22):
Above their eyebrows is the inscription of hell:
Give up hope forever.

Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. - M.: “Locked-Press”. Vadim Serov. 2003.

See what “Abandon hope, ye who enter here” in other dictionaries:

From Italian: Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch entrate. Literal translation: Abandon all hope, you who enter here. From the “Divine Comedy” (“Hell”, canto 3) by the Italian medieval poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) inscription on the gates of hell. A … Dictionary of popular words and expressions

Leave your clothes, everyone who enters here.- (from Dante’s Divine Comedy: Abandon hope, all who enter here, inscription on the gates of hell) 1) original meaning; 2) supposedly a poster in front of the entrance to the bathhouse; 3) the person entering the room is told to undress... Live speech. Dictionary of colloquial expressions

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- (Dante Alighieri) (1265 1321), Italian. poet, author of the poem “The Divine Comedy” (“La Divina commedia”, 1307 21). Quotes from the “Divine Comedy”, fragments of songs, reminiscences from D. are often found in Russian. liter re s con. 18th century L. in the novel “Vadim” ... Lermontov Encyclopedia

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Spinalonga is a small island near Crete. Formerly a fortress, then a medieval Turkish shopping mall, even later - one of the circles of hell. It is the latter aspect that attracts tourists to Spinalonga today.

In the 17th century, Christians on the island fled from the Turks and forced conversion to Islam.

In 1903, the sad story of Spinalonga began. The island turned into the last refuge for lepers - a leper colony.

The first 251 lepers from Crete were sent here. It was not yet known that most of the population had a natural immunity against leprosy, and the risk of infection was much less than it seemed.

After the unification of Crete with Greece, the number of sick people on the island reached 1000 people; they were brought from all over Greece. Later - from abroad.

Spinalonga has become an international leper colony.

The island was an endless slum.

Cemetery with delay. Many died forgotten by everyone.

Patients on Spinalonga received a small monthly allowance, which was sometimes not enough for food and medicine. Despite all the difficulties, these people not only did not give up, but also developed a self-organized society with its own rules and values. They got married, although this was prohibited by law because of their illness, and gave birth to children - some of whom were born healthy.

With a small allowance, they bought the necessary products at a small market, which was organized by peasants from Plaka at the gates of the island. Purchases were paid for with specially sterilized money, and the same thing happened with letters from lepers. Those who had the physical strength to do so were engaged in gardening and fishing.

The Church of St. Panteleimon, built by the sick, operated on the island. The services were led by a priest who, being healthy, volunteered to share his life with the lepers.

They say that on the island there were coffee shops, bakeries, hairdressers, shops to improve their own living conditions. Hard to believe.

In 1936, the sick Epaminondas Remundakis, a third-year law student, arrived on the island, became the founder of the “Brotherhood of the Sick of Spinalonga” and fought for many years to improve the living conditions of the sick. Thanks to the activities of the society, houses in Spinalonga were plastered, a ring road was opened, a street cleaning service was organized, a theater and a cinema were built, and classical music was constantly heard from speakers on the streets. So the life of the lepers began to resemble something close to the life of normal people outside this island. Even electricity in Crete first appeared here.

Today, mirrors are inserted into some door and window openings. Your own reflection in these mirrors and the atmosphere around you make a strong impression.

And at the top of the fortress there is an installation in the form of a woman walking either into an abyss or into the sea?! Although there are thickets of cacti below.

It is likely that new temporary residents entered the island through these gates. Abandon hope, everyone who enters here...

A little over 100 years have passed. The disease has long been defeated and the tourist era has begun on Spinalonga. The island is visited by more than 300,000 people a year (about 1200 – 1500 visitors per day).

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