The Mill Of Elves In Trikala
- by XpatAthens
- Wednesday, 30 December 2015
The city of Trikala in Central Greece has become known as a winter destination because of an innovative idea to turn an old mill into the largest Christmas theme park in Greece. Four years after its inception the project has evolved from a small Christmas fair to a large theme park that last year welcomed more than 850.000 visitors.
“It wasn’t easy in the beginning to convince the city’s council to spend a million euros to make a seasonal theme park that operates only for 38 days per year and then it is deconstructed, while visitors pay nothing to enter” said Odysseas Raptis, the CEO of eTrikala S.A. who runs the project. “Our goal wasn’t to make money from the project itself, but to find a way to stimulate the local economy.”
Within four years, they are almost breaking even, while the “The Mills of Elves” brings in about 15 million euros to local businesses and the surrounding villages.
“Greece didn’t have a big Christmas theme park and we thought that this would be an excellent idea for people to come to our city,” added Raptis.