According to Unesco's definition, Cultural heritage does not end at monuments and collections of objects. It also includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, including language,  performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.

In the streets of our town, Kalamata, you can find in some places and stores many products of our local and traditional cuisine. Some of these products are the olive oil, the honey, the olives, the figs. Also, you can find traditional food like frumenty and a kind of nuddles called hilopites or some desserts such as ''baklavas'','' diples'' and ''galaktoboureko''.

Another well-known custom takes place in the area of the port on the day of Epiphany (6th of January). On that day, a priest throws a cross in the sea in order to "sanctify" the water. Swimmers jump into the cold water, trying to catch the cross. The first one who catches the cross will be blessed the whole year.  Melina Efthimiou , Despoina Kalogeropoulou , Tenentes Nikos

Another element of our intangible cultural heritage is silkworm cultivation, because in our area there were a lot of mulberry trees (you can see one in the picture). Their leaves served as food to silkworms, which produced the silk thread. The famous silk scarves of Kalamata were created by this thread.
Baliamis Giorgos, Papagiannopoulos Dimosthenis, Mokakou Ioanna.

Part of the intangible heritage is the oral tradition, including language. The oldest poems of the greek tradition that were recited from generation to generation are the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. We are taught these epic poems in school from the antiquity till today.

Our team decided to search traces of our intangible heritage around our school in Kalamata. We had a working sheet which guided us and here you can read what we have found.

Religious customs are an important part of the greek intangible cultural heritage. One of the most well-known customs is related to the church of the Ascension (Pentecost), which is located near to the port of Kalamata. According to the custom, the celebration day of the Ascension ( 50 days after Easter), people eat gournopoula  ( roasted pork) and, in the past, they used to go swimming for the first time.  Melina Efthimiou , Despoina Kalogeropoulou , Tenentes Nikos

In our school’s neighborhood there is a street called Akrita. It is named after “Akrites”, the keepers of the borders in the Byzantine era, who have been sung by our people, in songs called Akritic.
 Baliamis Giorgos, Papagiannopoulos Dimosthenis, Mokakou Ioanna

Another part of intangible heritage is language. We observed the signs during our walk and discovered that has borrowed words from other languages such as πάρκο (park, parco from the Italian) and ντουάνα (duana) from the Venetian word that means customs. The greek has lent words to other languages such as σχολείο (school, scuola, schule) and μουσείο (museum, museo).

Our route in the neighbourhood