A wooden double-leaf door with nails and a high curtain wall protected the mansion and its occupants from the prying eyes of passers-by but also enemies and bandits.
In the paved courtyard there were once the auxiliary rooms of the mansion (wood-fired oven, toilet, stables). Today only the water well, essential for any mansion of that time, and the marble decorated bases for the installation of a wooden pergola are still standing in the courtyard. The house probably also had a small orchard with fruit trees. At the back of the mansion there is an outhouse, a house built to accommodate servants, visitors or family members after their marriage. It is not known whether it was built at the same time as the main mansion.
A double-leaved, wooden door is leading to the “embati” or “messia”, an inner yard paved with square marble slabs. A second double-leaved door is leading to the “katoi”, a semi-basement where the family kept the kitchen utensils, the tools and the wine in large wooden barrels.
A smaller wooden door on the ground floor of the mansion leads to the shop and workshop-storage room. In these rooms the owner of the mansion stored and displayed the products he brought back from his travels.
From the “embati”, a small door leads to the middle-floor, the so called “mezzo-patoma” and to the winter room with the fireplace and the beautiful wall paintings. Next to the winter room there is a small room and the kitchen with a big fireplace, a marble sink placed on the window sill and the service exit. Opposite the kitchen are two elevated spaces, which were used for weaving by the women.
A second, larger staircase leads to the “anoi” (upper floor), the floor of the mansion that was mainly used during the summer months. In the centre of this floor there is the “sala”, a single elongated space. On one side it has a raised floor that was used to accommodate the orchestra that entertained the family and their guests at celebrations. The space has a series of wooden windows and a second set of vitraux, i.e. skylights decorated with colored glass that were probably supplied from Venice.
The two rooms on this floor, to the right and left of the staircase, were the good rooms of the house. They had wooden elevated floors that served as sofas or beds, the ‘minteria’. On the outside, they formed projections called ‘sahnisia’.
At the back of this floor was another room with a fireplace. Its mesantra, that is, the wardrobe of this room concealed a small corridor leading to the “necessary”, an indoor toilet. On the opposite side of the floor is another room with a fireplace that was used as a bedroom.
Colorful murals decorate the walls of the mansion and its wooden roof. A special place in one of the good rooms of the floor is occupied by a representation of Constantinople, a beloved city for the enslaved Greeks and a symbol of Orthodoxy. The ceilings of the mansion also bear elaborate wooden and wood-carved decoration with coloured rosettes in the centre, the so-called “omphaloi”.
It remains unknown to this day when the first owner sold his mansion, but also when and under what circumstances it came into the hands of Lazaros Poulkidis. Markings of Constantine, son of Lazarus, on the mezzanines of the floor testify that in 1884 the family was already living there. At the beginning of the twentieth century the house passed as a dowry into the hands of a daughter, Eleni, who lived there with her family probably until the beginning of the Second World War. In the difficult years that followed, the mansion “hosted” many passers-by, some of whom left their “traces” in the mansion. The mansion was declared a listed building by a presidential decree as early as 1924 (Government Gazette 312/A/16-12-1924) but it was only in 1963 that the Ministry of Culture managed to acquire the mansion. In 2013, maintenance and restoration work began on the mansion, as part of the co-funded by the EU project “Restoration of the Poulkos Mansion in Siatista, Kozani” (NSRF 2007-2013), which was completed by the Ephorate of Antiquities of Hemathia in 2016 and was handed over to the Ephorate of Antiquities of Kozani, which as the protective authority of the mansion, can now welcome daily visitors to this monument.
