Tourist information -
Ioannina
Ioannina covers a rocky promontory jutting out
into the water, its fortifications punctuated by bastions and minarets.
From this base, Ali Pasha carved out - at the expense of the sultan's
authority - a fiefdom that encompassed much of western Greece and
present-day Albania: an act of contemptuous rebellion that portended
wider defiance in the Greeks' own war of independence.
Disappointingly, most of the city is modern and undistinguished,
a testimony not so much to Ali (although he did raze much of it
to the ground while under siege in 1820), as to developers in the
1960s - and the fact that Ioánnina is one of Greece's fastest-growing
provincial capitals, with the city and suburbs' population recently
reaching about 130,000. Much of this has been sucked inward from
moribund villages in the remoter reaches of the province, but it
also includes some 25,000 students at the major university here,
who keep things lively, plus military personnel and their dependants
- Ioánnina has served as a strategic garrison town since
its incorporation into Greece.
However, there are still a pair of stone-built mosques (and a synagogue)
to evoke the Ottoman era, two worthwhile museums , and the fortifications
of Ali Pasha's citadel, the Kástro , the latter surviving
more or less intact. Ioánnina is also the jump-off point
for visits to the caves of Pérama , some of Greece's largest,
on the western shore of the lake, and the longer excursion to the
mysterious and remote Oracle of Zeus at Dodona , as well as to Epirus's
most rewarding corner, Zagóri .
The Kástro is an obvious point to begin your explorations.
In its heyday the walls dropped abruptly to the lake, and were moated
on their landward (southwest) side. The moat has been filled in,
and a quay-esplanade now extends below the lakeside ramparts, but
there is still the feel of a citadel; inside nestles a quiet residential
zone with narrow alleys and its own shops.
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