The Open-air Water Power Museum in Dimitsana is a thematic museum which enhances the importance of water-power in traditional societies, by presenting the basic pre-industrial techniques that use water as the main source of power for the production of various products.

On a site 1,000 sq. m. in area, in the midst of dense vegetation and abundant running water, installations and water-powered equipment have been restored to meet the operational requirements of the museum.   Each of the restored traditional workshop buildings houses a permanent exhibition whose theme is relevant to the workshop’s original use: The first building houses a fulling-tub and a flour-mill.  About twenty covered or open-air fulling tubs, where hand-woven woollen textiles, kilims and blankets (velentzes, batanises, tserges and tsolies) were washed, operated in Dimitsana and its environs until the mid-20th century. The art of the fuller (nerotriviaris or dristeliaris) lay in correctly calculating the length of time each textile should remain in the basin.

Adjacent to this installation a flour-mill with a horizontal waterwheel has been restored.  Here the visitor can throw grains of corn into the hopper and observe how these are ground by the millstones and fall into the flour tub.  The room next door, with the fireplace, used to be the miller’s residence, where he and his – usually large – family would lay out their bedding in the loft each night and sleep side by side. Outside the mill, a makeshift shelter has been constructed, such as the one that used to cover the raki still, which was set up in open-air after the vintage, for the production of tsipouro (aquavit) from the marcs, and operated continuously for 3-4 days and nights.

Located exactly opposite is a two-storey building with the byre on the ground floor and the tanner’s house above.  A fireplace used to warm the one-roomed building that now houses the museum’s offices.
The tannery is located at a lower level.  The interior of the workshop is divided into “zones”, which correspond to the various stages in processing hides.  The first zone is for the “waters”, lime and other preparatory tasks.  In the next zone are the vats (limbes) used for tanning. A well-ventilated zone is destined for the hanging and drying of leathers in the shade, and finally, a well-lit corner is reserved for the post-tanning tasks.

A cobbled road leads to a flat area in which a natural tank is formed, and leads to the powder mill. Dimitsana was one the hundreds of villages that knew how to collect saltpetre since the 16th century and paid it as tax in kind to the Turks. During the Greek War of Independence, the inhabitants of Dimitsana were active in supplying the freedom-fighters with the essential material for ammunition. Kolokotronis writes: “We had gunpowder, Dimitzana made it”. Gunpowder is an important element of the area’s cultural identity and is kept alive in the memory and narratives of the people in these parts. It is exactly this historical identity that is featured in the Open-Air Water Power Museum, by reconstructing the powder mill with swingles (kopania), used in Dimitsana during the War of Independence and up until the early 20th century, while at the same time preserving the specific technology for gunpowder production, which had disappeared in Europe since the 18th century.



After the Open Air Water-Power Museum, the visitor may ramble through the Lousios gorge, by following the path from the museum, leading down to Paliochori, reaching the traditional bridge at Monopori and ending in Gortyna. 
 
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