About Us
The Man Behind The Pizza
Arthur Premetis is the man behind Arthurs Pizza. The Premetis family is originally of Souliot descent. Arthur and his brother Theo come from a village in north western Greece called Zalongo, which is well known in Greek history for the "Dance of Zalongo", which occurred in 1803, where about 60 Souliot women "danced" off the cliffs with their children, rather than be taken captive by the Ottomans.
This incident was before the War of Independence. The War of Independence did not start until 1821. Basically all (most) of Greece as it is known today was under the Ottomans with some exceptions like Souli where Arthur and Theo come from. In 1803 the Ottomans( Ali Pasha) made a deal with the Souliots to give up their mountains in return for their women and children to have safe passage to Kerkyra (the island of Corfu). The Ali Pasha however did not keep their part of the deal and killed many Souliot men, leaving the women and children alone. The women bravely decided to jump over the cliffs of Zalongo rather than face being captives of Ali Pasha. So in reality there was no "dance" but it has become part of Greek folklore that the women danced off the cliffs holding their children.
Arthur and Theo's great-great-grand father George Giovelas (the name Premetis came later, that's another story) was 14 years old. He survived and walked all the way from the cliffs of Zalongo to an abandoned village about 100 kilometres away and started the village that Arthur and Theo were eventually born in. He named it Zalongo to remind him and its descendants of what had happened. This event became known to all Greeks and Philhellenes abroad, and their imagination created the "Dance Of Zalongo". It also inspired the French painter Ary Scheffer to paint "The Souliot Women", which is related to the "Dance of Zalongo", and hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
