Servia

This article deals with the church; for the racing driver, see Oriol Servià ; for the ship, see Servia (ship) .

Servia Municipality Δημοτική Ενότητα Σερβίων (Σέρβια)
Basic data
State :	Greece
Region :	Western Macedonia
Regional District :	Kozani
Municipality :	Servia-Velvendo
Geographic coordinates :	40 ° 12 ′  N , 22 ° 1 ′  E Coordinates: 40 ° 12 ′  N , 22 ° 1 ′  E
Height above d. M .:	290 - 438 - 1060 m Goules - Servia - Metaxas
Area :	400.116 km²
Residents :	8,611 (2011)
Population density :	21.5 inhabitants / km²
Code No .:	140401
Structure:	1 city district 14 local communities
Website:	www.servianet.gr
Located in the Servia-Velvendo municipality and Kozani regional district

Servia ( Greek Σέρβια ( n. Pl. )) Is a small town and the administrative seat and municipality of the municipality of Servia-Velvendo in the Greek region of Western Macedonia . Until 2010 Servia was an independent municipality.

geography

The small town of Servia is located south of Lake Polyfytos , a large reservoir of the Aliakmonas River . The Servia municipality also includes areas and localities north of Lake Polyfytos. The distance to Kozani in the north is about 30 km.

history

Lake Polyfytos (south bank) with the small town of Servia in the background

The oldest traces of settlement in the municipality of Servia date from the late Neolithic .

The village of Servia today was created during the Byzantine Empire by amalgamating several smaller villages in the area. It is very likely that Serblia or Servlia (τὰ Σέρβλια) mentioned in the De Administrando Imperio of Emperor Constantine VII is identical to today's Servia and the city is therefore from the earliest Serbian settlement in southern Macedonia from the time of the emperor's reign Herakleios (610–641) emerged from it.

The Byzantine fortress south of today's small town was built between 560 and 630 AD. In the 7th century AD, the fortified city of Servia was established: it consisted of an acropolis (fortress), an upper and a lower town.

From 1880 Servia, then under the Ottoman name Serfiçe, with around 8,000 inhabitants was the administrative center of the sanjak of the same name . and stayed with the Ottoman Empire until 1912 . After the outbreak of the first Balkan War in October 1912, Servia was reached on October 22, 1912 by Greek troops advancing from Elassona and Tyrnavos over the Meluna Pass. The Ottoman army in Servia with 18,000 soldiers under the command of Hassan Taksim Pascha took on the Greek armed forces. In the so-called Battle of Sarandaporos after two days, the Greek armed forces succeeded in putting the Ottoman armed forces under such pressure that they gave up their positions south of Servia and withdrew via the valley of the Aliakmonas north of Servia into the Central Macedonian lowlands; on October 30, 1912, Servia was occupied by Greek troops. In 1913 it was finally assigned to the Kingdom of Greece in the Treaty of Bucharest and in 1918 it was recognized as a rural community (kinotita).

In mid-April 1941, Servia was captured by troops of the German Wehrmacht as part of the Marita company during World War II . After the conquest by German troops, Servia fell under the control of the Italian occupation forces. In March 1943 Servia was briefly occupied by the insurgents of the communist-controlled Greek People's Liberation Army ELAS; Servia was burned down as part of a persecution and / or retaliation action by the Italian troops against the ELAS resistance fighters, who had already left Servia when the Italian troops arrived. In June 1943, ELAS insurgents attacked a German troop convoy on the way from Elassona to Servia. This was followed by a retaliatory action by German troops against Servia, in which an unspecified number of male residents were captured or executed. Servia was subsequently declared a "dead zone".

Servia was also the scene of the fighting within the Greek resistance against the Axis powers. At the end of 1944 the local leader of the non-communist-controlled rebels, Michail Papadopoulos - called Michalgas - was captured by fighters of the communist-controlled ELAS in the Servia area. Michalgas was initially a sympathizer of the initially republican-oriented resistance organization EDES. The establishment of an EDES-controlled resistance group in Servia failed, however, due to the partly armed resistance of ELAS, so that Michalgas built a local resistance group, which was based militarily on the arming of the local residents, mainly refugees from Asia Minor. In November 1944, the communist-controlled ELAS carried out regular cleansing operations against towns that belonged to a resistance organization like that of Michalgas.

In the winter of 1944–1945 a commission of the International Committee of the Red Cross visited Servia. She found that no less than 88% of the population of the Servia region had become homeless during the occupation.

Administrative division

In 1964 Servia was elevated to a municipal municipality (dimos) , and in 1997 numerous neighboring rural communities were incorporated. With the administrative reform in 2010 , Servia merged with three other municipalities in the newly created municipality of Servia-Velvendo , where it has since been a municipality.

District local community	Greek name	code	Area (km²)	2001 residents	Residents 2011	Villages and settlements
Servia	Δημοτική Κοινότητα Σερβίων	14040101	51,603	4465	3540	Servia, Lava, Nea Lava
Avles	Τοπική Κοινότητα Αυλών	14040102	11.002	0394	0293	Avles
Vathylakkos	Τοπική Κοινότητα Βαθυλάκκου	14040103	16,498	0652	0615	Vathylakkos
Goules	Τοπική Κοινότητα Γουλών	14040104	11,352	0226	0185	Goules
Imera	Τοπική Κοινότητα Ιμέρων	14040105	38.053	0323	0212	Imera, Avra
Kastania	Τοπική Κοινότητα Καστανιάς	14040106	48.975	0098	0565	Kastania, Nea Kastania
Kranidia	Τοπική Κοινότητα Κρανιδίων	14040107	12.302	0563	0461	Kranidia
Lefkara	Τοπική Κοινότητα Λευκάρων	14040108	25,250	0231	0211	Lefkara
Mesiani	Τοπική Κοινότητα Μεσιανής	14040109	16,449	0340	0280	Mesiani
Metaxas	Τοπική Κοινότητα Μεταξά	14040110	58.197	0410	0226	Metaxas
Neraida	Τοπική Κοινότητα Νεράιδας	14040111	12,198	0132	0148	Neraida
Platanorrevmatos	Τοπική Κοινότητα Πλατανορρεύματος	14040112	35,300	1061	1004	Platanorrevmatos
Polyrracho	Τοπική Κοινότητα Πολυρράχου	14040113	28.714	0400	0269	Polyrracho; Prosili
Roditis	Τοπική Κοινότητα Ροδίτου	14040114	16.745	0304	0290	Roditis, Kouvouklia
Trigoniko	Τοπική Κοινότητα Τριγωνικού	14040115	17,478	0402	0312	Trigoniko
total		140401	400.116	10,001	8611

Population, administration and politics

population

After the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War from 1919 to 1922 and the subsequent Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923, Greek refugees from Anatolia were settled in Servia.

Economy, transport and infrastructure

traffic

Polyfytos or Servia / Neraida Bridge over Lake Polyfytos. The small town of Servia can be seen near the south bank of Lake Polyfytos

The national road 3 (European route 65) runs through Servia from Kozani to Elassona. The Polyfytos Lake is crossed by the 1350 long bridge of the same name (also rarely referred to as the Servia / Neraida bridge).

Web links

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Results of the 2011 census at the National Statistical Service of Greece (ΕΛ.ΣΤΑΤ) (Excel document, 2.6 MB)
2. ↑ Cressida Ridley, Kenneth A. Wardle: Rescue excavations at Servia 1971-1973. In: The Annual of the British School at Athens . Volume 74, 1979, pp. 185-230.
3. ↑ William Heurtley: Prehistoric Macedonia . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1939.
4. ↑ Stratos Nanoglou: Social and monumental space in Neolithic Thessaly, Greece. In: European Journal of Archeology. Volume 4, 2001, pp. 303-322. eja.sagepub.com  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ^ Charalambos Bouras: Aspects of the Byzantine City, Eighth-Fifteenth Centuries. In: Angeliki E. Laiou (Ed.): The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, Washington DC 2002, pp. 498–528, p. 503. doaks.org ( Memento of the original of September 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. 1888, digitized
7. ↑ Gy. Moravcsik, RJH Jenkins: Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio . Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Washington 1967, pp. 152, 153.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Kosmas Savvilotidis: The Byzantine and Post- Byzantine monuments of Servia. 1999.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Kosmas Savvilotidis: Servia. 1999.
10. ^ ^{A b} Charalambos Bouras: Aspects of the Byzantine City, Eighth-Fifteenth Centuries. In: Angeliki E. Laiou (Ed.): The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, Washington DC 2002, pp. 498–528, p. 507. doaks.org ( Memento of the original of September 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. 1888, (link digitized version)
12. ↑ Serfidsje . In: Heinrich August Pierer , Julius Löbe (Hrsg.): Universal Lexicon of the Present and the Past . 4th edition. tape 15 . Altenburg 1862, p. 885 ( zeno.org ).
13. ^ Friedrich Immanuel: The Balkan War 1912/13. Second and third booklet: The war up to the start of the armistice in December 1912. Verlag Ernst Siegfried Mittler and Son, 1913, pp. 90–91.
14. ^ ^{A b} Giannis S. Koliopoulos, John S. Koliopoulos: Plundered Loyalties: Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-85065-381-X , p. 101.
15. ^ Giannis S. Koliopoulos, John S. Koliopoulos: Plundered Loyalties: Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-85065-381-X , pp. 80-81.
16. ^ Giannis S. Koliopoulos, John S. Koliopoulos: Plundered Loyalties: Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-85065-381-X , p. 189.
17. ^ Giannis S. Koliopoulos, John S. Koliopoulos: Plundered Loyalties: Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-85065-381-X , p. 42.