The Ottomans and the Greek Landscape: The Perception of Landscape in Greece by the Ottomans and Its Impact on the Architectural and Landscape Design

The current research examines the transformation of the rural and urban landscape during the Ottoman Period across modern Greek territory and the relationship between those changes and the cultural as well as political perceptions of the Ottoman elites, from roughly 1400 to 1800. The study embraces the view of the importance of the landscape as a crucial factor in the birth and development of civilizations and it attempts to confirm this view by projecting it in intentional examples of organization of the built space in Greece, focusing, as already mentioned, on the Ottoman period. Those aforementioned examples highlight the influence of the political and cultural trends in the Ottoman court on specific landscape formations, which reflect the social structure of the Ottoman Empire and constitute at the same time, the spatial inscription of all political decisions. The methodology adopted in this research with regards to the exploration of the relationship between the building units and the natural surroundings in the selected case studies is based on the theoretical investigation of the cultural background of the Ottomans and their association to the Byzantine heritage, supplemented by in situ research in thoroughly selected case studies across Greece. The results of this combined methodological toolset attested to the fact that the Ottomans, through the use of spatial and cultural elements deriving either from their oriental background or from the local established ones, altered the spatial qualities of their surroundings in a way that the emerging political ideologies, the financial power, and the imperial glory of the Ottomans were manifested into the landscape.