Ioannina

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Municipality of Ioannina (Ioannina)
Δήμος Ιωαννιτών (Ιωάννινα)
Qarku i Janinës (Albanian)
Ioannina (Greece)
Bluedot.svg
Basic data
State : GreeceGreece Greece
Region : Epirus
Regional District : Ioannina
Geographic coordinates : 39 ° 41 ′  N , 20 ° 51 ′  E Coordinates: 39 ° 41 ′  N , 20 ° 51 ′  E
Area : 401.98 km²
Residents : 112,486 (2011)
Population density : 279.8 inhabitants / km²
Seat: Ioannina
LAU-1 code no .: 1801
Districts : 6 municipal districts
Local self-government : f128 city districts
31 local communities
Website: www.ioannina.gr
Location in the Epirus region
File: 2011 Dimos Ioanniton.png
f9 f10 f8

Ioannina ( Greek Ιωάννινα ( n. Pl. ), Colloquially also Γιάννενα , Jánnena , or Γιάννινα , Jánnina ; Albanian  Janinë / -a ; Aromanian Ianina or Enine ; Turkish Yanya ) is the capital of the Greek region of Epirus . Its population is 112,486 (2011). The center of the city is characterized by narrow streets and many old buildings from the Ottoman era. The former municipalities of Anatoli , Bizani , Ioannina Island , Pamvotida and Perama , which were incorporated into the administrative reform in 2010 , are now the municipal districts of Ioannina.

geography

The city of Ioannina is located at an altitude of about 480  m on the western shore of Lake Pamvotida . The municipality that surrounds the lake includes the Ioannina plateau, which is a fertile landscape in the middle of the Pindos Mountains. The eastern boundary of the plateau on the eastern bank of Lake Pamvotida is formed by the Mitsikeli and Driskos mountain ranges . The western limit is formed by the northern foothills of the Tomaros massif and the Ori Paramythias . On the lakeshore in the center of the city, the castle hill stands out from the surrounding area. To the west there are several wooded hills, some of which are located in the middle of the city area, some on its edge. Igoumenitsa is about 100 km west of Ioannina , Thessaloniki in the northeast of Ioannina is about 250 km away, and the Greek capital Athens is about 450 km to the southeast. The next larger towns and cities are Arta in the south, Igoumenitsa in the west, Kalambaka and Trikala in the southeast, Preveza in the southwest, Kastoria , Kozani and Florina in the northeast.

history

A settlement founded by Emperor Justinian I is said to have existed on the site of today's Ioannina in the 6th century . The first written mention of Ioannina occurs in the documentation of an ecclesiastical council in Constantinople in the year 879: in these records a bishop ( Episkopos ) from Ioannina is recorded ( Zachariou Ioanninon ). The name comes from a monastery that was dedicated to John the Baptist . In 1085 the city was conquered by the southern Italian Normans , who also built the first fortifications. Nevertheless, the Byzantines soon succeeded in regaining the city.

When the Byzantine Empire broke apart as a result of the Fourth Crusade and the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204, a Greek successor state, the Despotate Epirus , was able to establish itself on the coasts of the Ionian and Adriatic Seas and Ioannina became its capital for a short time. The Epirotic despots also sought to expand their power in the ecclesiastical sphere against the Greek emperor in Nicaean exile. For this reason they raised Ioannina to the seat of archbishopric in 1318. The Byzantines conquered Ioannina several times: in 1264, 1290 and finally in 1335, but also lost the city again. In 1353 the Serbian King Stefan Dušan took Ioannina and all of Epirus . In 1385 the Florentine Acciajouli took power in Ioannina. In 1430 the Ottoman Empire finally conquered Ioannina, which remained under Ottoman control for almost 500 years until 1913.

The long Ottoman rule had a decisive influence on the cityscape, not least because the Turks promoted Ioannina as a regional trading center and capital of a vilayet . Between 1520 and 1538 under Sultan Suleyman I , 613 Muslim and 32,097 Christian families lived in Ioannina and the surrounding Ottoman administrative region Liva . An unsuccessful uprising by Orthodox Greeks at the beginning of the 17th century led to the expulsion of Christians from the castle district. The churches there were also destroyed. Mosques were erected in their place and Ioannina became increasingly Islamic in the following decades. The population has been a mixed bag since then at least. In addition to the Greeks and Turks , Christian and Muslim Albanians , Aromanians ( Wallachians ) and Jews also lived here . The Jewish community had over 6,000 members in the 19th century.

The Kaplaneios School

These changes did not detract from Ioannina's economic prosperity. The city also remained a center of Christian culture. Wealthy Greek merchants enabled the church to establish several important schools in the 17th and 18th centuries, which, because of their good reputation, were also attended by the Muslims of the region. The famous Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi , who was in Ioannina in 1670, describes the city as a trading center with 4000 houses and more than 1900 shops and handicrafts. The establishment of the schools was promoted by the fact that a large number of the merchants themselves came from Epirus and the city was in a geographically and politically favorable position. Facing the Ionian Islands , Western intellectual currents from France and Italy could quickly spread into the mother country. In this way, the Epifanios School was founded in 1648, away from the patriarchate and on the edge of the Turkish dominion . The initiator was the Epirotic merchant Epifanos Egoumenos , a member of the Brotherhood of St. Nicholas. Science found its way into schools as a new branch of instruction. Another school was built on November 5, 1676 by the merchant Manos Gkioumas , and on April 30, 1734, Lampros Maroutses donated 5000 ducats and ordered lessons in "logica, fisica, metafisica, theologia in greco et in latino". Patronage gradually developed , the brothers Lampros and Simos Maroutses reorganized the old Epifanios School , which had ceased to exist due to a lack of teachers and material resources, and renamed it the Maroutses School . They hired Eugenios Boulgares , an admirer of Leibniz , as a teacher. Boulgares taught in Ioannina for seven years from 1742 to 1749 and encouraged his students to spread and establish new teaching facilities to put an end to obscurantism.

The Aslan Pasha Mosque

At the end of the 18th century Tepedelenli Ali Pasha became governor of Epirus. He paid little attention to the directives of the Sublime Porte and built up an autonomous sphere of power. In doing so, he relied on Albanian fighters of his tribe and on Greek insurgents who were dissatisfied with Ottoman rule. He also made pacts with France and Great Britain , who maintained consulates at his court in Ioannina. From 1807 he, who was also called the Lion of Janina , ruled from Ioannina, virtually independent over large parts of Albania and Greece. The English poet Lord Byron , who was a guest at Ali Pasha's court for some time in 1809, left a colorful portrayal of life in Ioannina, a flourishing city with 35,000 inhabitants. In October 1820, Sultan Mahmud II sent troops against the renegade Pasha. Ioannina was besieged for more than 15 months until Ali Pasha could be lured out of his fortress with a trick in February 1822 and murdered. On August 20, 1869, Ioannina was hit by a major fire: 1,300 shops and warehouses as well as 300 houses in the commercial district were destroyed.

Surrender of the Ottomans in Ioannina

The rule of the Ottoman Empire over Ioannina ended with the First Balkan War . On November 25, 1912, Greek troops were able to enclose Ioannina in the south, east and west after their advance. After the defeat of the Ottoman army in Macedonia , the Greek army moved troops to Epirus. In contrast to the other warring parties, the Greek government did not sign the armistice with the Ottoman Empire, but continued the fighting in Epirus. The scattered remnants of the Ottoman army moved to Ioannina after defeats at Monastir and Florina and strengthened the units there. The winter of 1912/1913 let the fighting around Ioannina subsided. With the end of winter, the Greek forces attacked the Ottoman defenders and were finally able to take Ioannina on March 5, 1913; the remaining Ottoman troops surrendered.

Ioannina lost much of its oriental character in the following decades. Not only did the Turks emigrate to Asia Minor , many Jews also turned their backs on the city. Greek refugees from Asia Minor settled in Ioannina during the same period; In 1923, a fifth of the city was given over to these refugees.

Deportation of the Jewish community, admission of the propaganda company , March 25, 1944

During the Second World War and the occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers Germany , Italy and Bulgaria , Ioannina fell under Italian occupation sovereignty after the Greek surrender at the end of April 1941. After Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies in September 1943, German occupation forces replaced the Italians. The members of the Jewish population group were not threatened in life and limb under the Italian occupation, while in 1943 the deportations of the Jewish population groups, for example from Thessaloniki and Athens, were in full swing. On March 25, 1944, German troops surrounded the Jewish quarter on Lake Ioannina and informed the Jewish community representatives that every Jewish family had to be at predetermined meeting places within three hours. 1,700 members of the Jewish population group were brought to Larisa in a Wehrmacht truck to a concentration camp there and then deported by train from Athens to the Auschwitz concentration camp , where they were murdered. 95 percent of the Jewish population group was wiped out by this action on March 25, 1944. The photo documentation created on this day by the Wehrmacht's propaganda company is in the Federal Archives in Koblenz .

The members of the SS, police and armed forces involved in the deportation were not brought to justice by the West German judiciary after 1945. All preliminary investigations have been closed.

traffic

Ioannina is the crossroads of important roads in northwestern Greece. South of the city, the highway 2, named after the ancient Via Egnatia , runs from Igoumenitsa to Thessaloniki. Well-developed national roads connect Ioannina in the south with Arta (national road 5 or European route 853) and in the north with Siatista , Kozani and Albania (national road 20). The national road 6 (European route 90) leads east along the western flank of Mitsikeli and over the Driskos pass to Metsovo and then over the Katarra pass to Kalambaka and further into the Thessalian plain ( Trikala ) or to Grevena . The same National Road 6 connects Ioannina to the west with Paramythia and Igoumenitsa on the Ionian Sea. The east-west connection currently being implemented by National Road 6 will be supplemented by Autobahn 2. A smaller road (national road 17) leads to the touristic place Dodoni southwest of Ioannina.

Since 2007, motorists have been able to use the Ioannina bypass ( Periferiakí̱ Odós Περιφεριακή Οδός ).

North of the city is the small Ioannina airport , which is served by Aegean Airlines and Olympic Air . However, most of the national traffic is handled by long-distance bus lines. The creation of a rail link to Patras has not yet progressed beyond the planning stage. The airport was to be expanded in 2009, but so far only the new parking area and the expansion of the parking lot have been completed.

Education and culture

The Zosimaia School founded in 1828 (now a grammar school)

Ioannina is the seat of a university with almost 20,000 students, which was founded in the 1960s. The city has an archaeological museum, in which, among other things, finds from the ancient oracle site Dodona are exhibited. There is also a museum of Byzantine art in the city's old citadel. In addition, Ioannina is one of the few Greek cities where the main mosque from the Ottoman era has been preserved as a cultural monument.

Attractions

The Fethiye Mosque built in the 1430s
  • The old town on a peninsula is surrounded by the walls of the fortress ( Frourio ).
  • In the south there is the palace area, of which only the foundation walls and the mausoleum for Ali Pasha stand. The Byzantine Museum is housed here in two new buildings . Its valuable exhibits document the heyday of the city under Albanian-Muslim rule.
  • In the north is the Aslan Pasha Mosque , built in 1618/19, which today houses a folklore museum with traditional costumes, historical everyday objects and handicraft collections that are well worth seeing. Under the mosque are the catacombs and prisons in which many resistance fighters were executed during the Turkish period.
  • An Ottoman library has been preserved not far from the mosque .

Surroundings:

  • Ioannina Island ( Nisi Ioanninon ) in Lake Pamvotida with several small monasteries.
  • A good four kilometers from the city center, the stalactite cave of Perama, discovered in 1940, is one and a half kilometers long and can be visited in around 45 minutes.

Sports

PAS Ioannina is the name of the football club that currently represents the city and region of Epirus in Greece's top division, the Super League .

Personalities

Twin town

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Ioannina  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Results of the 2011 census ( Memento from June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) ( MS Excel , 2.6 MB) at the National Statistical Service of Greece (ΕΛ.ΣΤΑΤ)
  2. ↑ IK Vogiatzidou: Summary of the medieval history of Epirus (original title: Symvouli eis tin mesoeonikin Istorian tis Ipirou ). Publisher unknown / not listed. Athens, May 25, 1926. Cataloged for the library of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1937 and 1939 under the number 73636. Section III.
  3. ^ Alfred Philippson: The Greek landscapes. A country study . Vol. 5, Part 1: Epirus and the Pindus. Frankfurt am Main 1956, p. 226.
  4. ^ Alfred Philippson: The Greek landscapes. A country study . Vol. 5, Part 1: Epirus and the Pindus. Frankfurt am Main 1956, p. 255.
  5. ^ Alfred Philippson: The Greek landscapes. A country study . Vol. 5, Part 1: Epirus and the Pindus. Frankfurt am Main 1956, pp. 230-234.
  6. ↑ Apostolos E. Vacalopoulos: The Greek Nation, 1453-1669. The Cultural and Economic Background of Modern Greek Society. Rutgers University Press, 1976, ISBN 0-8135-0810-X , p. 69. English translation by: Istoria tou neou Ellinismou. Volume 2, 1909.
  7. ↑ Karin Apostolidis-Kusserow: The Greek national movement . In: Norbert Reiter (ed.): National movements in the Balkans . Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-447-02238-8 , p. 81 .
  8. ^ Newspaper article In: The New York Times, August 21, 1859, p. 1.
  9. ^ Friedrich Immanuel: The Balkan War 1912/13. Second and third booklet. The war up to the beginning of the armistice in December 1912. Verlag Ernst Siegfried Mittler and Son, 1913.
  10. ^ Newspaper article In: The New York Times. of March 17, 1913, p. 10.
  11. ^ Newspaper article In: The New York Times. dated December 31, 1913, p. 10.
  12. ^ Newspaper article In: The New York Times. dated November 18, 1923, p. XX6 (enclosure).
  13. ↑ Mark Mazower : Inside Hitler's Greece. The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44. Yale University Press, New Haven CT, ISBN 0-300-06552-3 , pp. 252-253.
  14. ↑ Peter Lutz Kalmbach: The end of our small town. The extermination of the Jewish community in Joannina. In: Jewish newspaper. No. 98, April 2014, p. 15.
  15. ↑ a b Lambert Schneider, Christoph Höcker: Greek mainland. (Dumont art guide). DuMont-Verlag, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-2936-9 .
  16. ↑ Peter Kanzler, Andreas Neumaier: North and Central Greece. Michael Müller Verlag, Erlangen 2004, ISBN 3-89953-161-2 .
  17. ↑ a b Apostolos E. Vacalopoulos: The Greek Nation, 1453-1669. The Cultural and Economic Background of Modern Greek Society. Rutgers University Press, 1976, ISBN 0-8135-0810-X , p. 134. English translation by: Istoria tou neou Ellinismou. Volume 2, 1909.