a phrase meaning "between the lakes". Messolonghi played a very important role during the Greek uprising against the Ottoman Empire. In 1822 the Turks tried to take it but were unsuccessful. Four years later the inhabitants of Messolonghi unfortunately succumbed to the Turks who surrounded and besieged the town, and on 10 April 1826 they decided on the mass Exodus of Messolonghi. Unfortunately the plan was betrayed to the Turks by someone, and the consequence was a tragic massacre.

Perhaps Messolonghi fell at the time of the Exodus, but her history stands high and illuminates hearts of free men throughout the ages. In 1829 Messolonghi was liberated from the Turks and again started to flourish. In 1835 they appointed a mayor and in 1937 the national government decided unanimouslyto name it the Sacred Town of Greece. In the years following its liberation the town of Messolonghi produced five famous Prime Ministers, many historical personages, poets, artists, scientists, architects, and men of letters. It developed as a tourist attraction, being a town symbolizing freedom and commemorating it through the many international memorials in the Garden of Heroes.

Everywhere in the Garden memories of the 1821 uprising are revived, especially when we see all the monuments of Philhellenic heroes: the tombs of Markos Botsaris, Kyriakos Mavromihalis, and other Greek heroes, the Swiss Philhellene Johann-Jacob Mayer, and the most famous of all, the heroic English Philhellene and poet Lord Byron, whose last breath was left in Messolonghi. The busts and the monuments of the heroes offer an image of the