Ioannina

History: from Byzantium to Ali Pasha

The origins of Ioannina remain partly uncertain: the city appears clearly in the sources only around the year 1000, when Emperor Basil II had fortifications built there against Bulgarian raids. The turning point comes in 1204, with the fall of Constantinople into crusader hands: Ioannina becomes one of the capitals of the Despotate of Epirus, a Byzantine stronghold that for decades resists the Latin advance and then the Ottoman one. In 1430 the city surrenders to the Turks, but obtains a treaty that guarantees it privileges rare within the empire, including the preservation of churches and property. From this arises a cultured, commercial Greek-Ottoman bourgeoisie that would make Ioannina, centuries later, a leading intellectual centre in the Balkans, with schools and printing houses already active in the eighteenth century.

It is, however, the figure of Ali Pasha of Tepelena that would forever mark the image of the city. An Ottoman governor of Albanian origins, between 1788 and 1822 he turned Ioannina into the capital of a semi-independent pashalik extending over much of Epirus and southern Albania, maintaining diplomatic relations with Napoleon and with England: Lord Byron also visited him, leaving an ambiguous portrait, halfway between fascination and horror, in Childe Harold. Suspected of treason by the Sublime Porte, Ali Pasha was besieged right in Ioannina and killed in 1822 on the island of the lake: his trajectory, as ruthless and bloody as it was skilful, remains to this day the story the city loves to tell its visitors.

The Aslan Pasha Mosque

Built in 1618 on the site of an earlier Christian church destroyed after an anti-Ottoman revolt, the Aslan Pasha Mosque dominates the upper part of the Kastro with its dome and slender minaret. From the square in front you enjoy one of the widest views over the lake and the surrounding mountains, which is why it remains one of the most frequented viewpoints in the city. The building, with its colonnaded portico and its bare yet harmonious interior, today houses the Municipal Ethnographic Museum of Ioannina: the rooms tell, through costumes, weapons, silver objects and memories of the local Jewish community, the cultural stratification of a city that for centuries hosted Greeks, Turks and Sephardic Jews side by side.

Nissi, the island of monasteries

A few minutes by boat from the lakefront, the only inhabited island of Pamvotida is home to a small fishing village and no fewer than six monasteries, some dating back to the sixteenth century and still decorated with original frescoes, such as that of Agios Nikolaos Filanthropinon, with its biblical scenes and portraits of ancient philosophers painted on the outer walls, a rare case in Orthodox iconography. The most visited monastery, however, remains Agios Panteleimon, where the last act of the Ali Pasha story played out: the room of the ambush, with the bullet holes still visible on the floor, is today a small museum dedicated to the pasha. Nissi can only be reached by boat, and it is precisely the absence of vehicle traffic that makes it one of the quietest walks in the area.

Silverwork, craft and identity

Ioannina was for centuries one of the main centres of silver working in the Balkans, thanks to guilds of craftsmen already organised in Ottoman times and to a tradition of extremely fine filigree that supplied local courts, including that of Ali Pasha, who was fond of jewellery and silverware to display as a sign of power. The workshops of the Kastro continue to work repoussé, filigree and niello to produce jewellery, frames, trays and liturgical objects, a knowledge handed down from father to son that has withstood changes of regime and economic crises. The Silverwork Museum, set up in one of the fortified towers of the Its Kale, traces this history with workshop tools, period pieces and explanations of the techniques, offering the key to understanding a craft that here has never become a mere tourist souvenir.

Zagori, the stone villages

North-east of Ioannina stretches Zagori, or Zagorochoria, a plateau of forty-six villages built almost entirely of local stone, recognised as a UNESCO Global Geopark together with the Vikos-Aoos massif. Two-storey stone houses, slate roofs, small austere churches and a network of paved paths connect villages such as Monodendri, Papigo or Vitsa, which remained isolated for centuries and precisely for this reason were able to preserve an extremely coherent architecture, today protected by strict regulations. Adding to the uniqueness of the landscape are the humpbacked stone bridges, such as the three-arched Plakidas-Kalogeriko bridge at Kipoi or that of Kokkorou, built between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by local craftsmen and still perfectly walkable today.

Epirot cuisine

Ioannina's table reflects its dual soul, of lake and mountain: from Pamvotida still come frogs, river shrimp and eels, prepared fried or stewed according to recipes going back at least to Ottoman times, while from Zagori and the surrounding mountains come cheeses such as local feta and smoked metsovone, used in the countless savoury pies of Epirot tradition: kolokithopita with pumpkin, batzina made from cornmeal, tyropita filled with mixed cheeses. There is no shortage of grilled meat, pulses from the inland valleys and sweets made with honey and walnuts, the legacy of a cuisine poor out of necessity but extremely rich in peasant know-how, which the restaurants of the historic centre and the mountain villages continue to offer with few concessions to standardised tourism.