Volos

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Municipality of Volos
Δήμος Βόλου (Βόλος)
Volos (Greece)
Bluedot.svg
Basic data
State : GreeceGreece Greece
Region : Thessaly
Regional District : Magnesia
Geographic coordinates : 39 ° 22 ′  N , 22 ° 56 ′  E Coordinates: 39 ° 22 ′  N , 22 ° 56 ′  E
Area : 387.14 km²
Residents : 144,449 (2011)
Population density : 373.1 inhabitants / km²
Post Code: 38221, 38222, 38333, 38334, 38500
Prefix: (+30) 24210
Community logo:
Community logo of the Municipality of Volos
Seat: Volos
LAU-1 code no .: 2401
Districts : 9 municipal districts
Local self-government : f125 city districts
17 local communities
Website: www.volos-city.gr
Location in the Thessaly region
File: 2011 Dimos Volou.png
f9 f8

Volos ( Greek Βόλος ( m. Sg. )) Is a Greek port city and municipality (Dimos) on the Pagasitic Gulf in the Thessaly region . The core city has 86,046 inhabitants (2011). 144,449 people now live in the municipality of Volos, which was expanded considerably in 2010 through incorporation.

To the east and southeast of Volos the peninsula of the Pelion Mountains extends into the Aegean Sea and thus forms the eastern boundary of the Pagasitic Gulf . Volos is about halfway between Thessaloniki in northern Greece and Athens in the south.

The city at the foot of the Pelion Mountains was founded in the 19th century below the ancient Iolkos , from which, according to legend, the Argonauts set off on their journey to Colchis . Located on a sheltered bay , the port soon became an important trading center in the eastern Mediterranean . Today there is a ferry to the Sporades from here .

history

In ancient times there were three cities close together: Iolkos, Demetrias and Pagasae . Excavations have been carried out on the road to Alikies Beach . The modern name Volos can be traced back with some certainty to the ancient name Iōlkos (< Middle Gr . Golos <Turkish. Yolkaz <Old Gr. Iōlkos).

During the Second World War , after an air raid by the Italians on Volos in November 1940 and an air raid by the Germans in 1941, many residents fled to the mountain villages of Pelion . The food, weapons and ammunition that the Italians left behind in Volos after the capitulation of Italy in September 1943 were immediately taken by the Greek resistance to the mountain village of Milies on the Pelion Railway and from there distributed to other places with mules . A unit of troops was sent to Milies under the direction of the German city commander Kurt Rickert , commander of the 7th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment in the 4th SS Police Panzergrenadier Division . The officer in front and a soldier were attacked and killed by partisans . In retaliation, almost the entire village was burned down by the Germans on October 4, 1943. According to official information from the municipal administration, 25 men were shot and three residents died in the burning houses.

As in other Greek locations, around 900 Jews in Volos were to be arrested by the Wehrmacht in 1943 and deported to extermination camps . In a memorable rescue operation, in which the Orthodox Archbishop Joakim and the German consul Helmut Scheffel were also involved, the resistance groups of the EAM (see ELAS ) succeeded in a very short time in distributing the 900 people to 24 Pelion villages and there under the supervision of ELAS and to provide or hide with the help of the local population with a new identity. Nevertheless 155 members of the Jewish community were murdered by the Nazis in Greece or in the extermination camps. See also Resistance to National Socialism .

In 1955 the historic city center was largely destroyed in an earthquake . The reconstruction resulted in a modern cityscape with almost no historical buildings. The old market hall (especially the fish market), which was demolished in 2006, was particularly worth seeing . A memorial at the harbor commemorates the departure of the Argonauts.

Volos hosted the preliminary round of the Olympic football tournament for women and men at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Since the Games, Volos has had a large modern football stadium with 22,000 seats, the Panthessaliko Stadio .

Population, administration, politics

Volos on the Pagasetic Gulf

The number of inhabitants of Volos, a trading and economic center in southern Thessaly, has increased significantly since 1881. The Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish war from 1919 to 1922 with the subsequent exchange of population between Greece and Turkey agreed in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne also caused a surge in population . For Volos, this led to the settlement of Greek refugees from Asia Minor and to the forced emigration of the Turkish population to Turkey. During this time, the “Nea Ionia” district was created for the refugees from Asia Minor. The population of Volos grew very rapidly from 1920 to 1928. Of the 47,892 inhabitants in 1928, 13,733 were refugees from Asia Minor. During the period of the Second World War from 1941 to 1944 and during the period of the Greek Civil War from 1946 to 1949, the population grew strongly again. Between 1928 and 1940 the population grew by 14.7%.

Population development in the city of Volos ( Βόλος )
year 1920 1928 1940 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 2011
Residents 30,046 47,892 54,919 73.178 80,846 88.096 71,378 77.192 82,439 86,046

Transport and economy

Fishing boats in the harbor
The promenade of Volos (Agios Konstantinos) directly on the Pagasitic Gulf
Volos station with the three gauge systems of the Greek railways (standard gauge, meter gauge, narrow gauge)

Volos is connected to both the Greek road network and the Greek rail network.

Due to its location on the Pagasitic Gulf, Volos has a protected large natural harbor that is used for trade, fishing and ferry traffic to the nearby islands of the Sporades . The Nea Anchialos Airport , about 30 km southwest lies shall after earlier exclusively military use of Frankfurt-Hahn , Munich and Nuremberg are direct flights in the summer season from.

Road traffic is the main mode of transport. From Volos, the national road 6 leads east towards Velestino, where there is a connection to the motorway 1 ( European route 75 ) from Thessaloniki via Larisa , Lamia , Thebes to Athens. The national road has been expanded into a motorway. To the south, the national road 30 leaves Volos and then leads to Farsala .

Volos was a special railway junction : from 1960 to around 2000, three different gauges of three different gauges met in Volos (normal gauge 1.435 m, meter gauge and narrow gauge with 600 mm gauge). The standard-gauge railway leads to Larisa in the north, where it connects to the main Athens – Thessaloniki line. The meter gauge of the formerly private Thessalian Railways led from Volos west to Kalambaka in northwestern Hessen . The 600 mm-gauge Pelion Railway established the connection from Volos to the Pelion Mountains. Today it is used for tourism in sections.

4 km south of the city, the Lafarge company's "Herakles" cement plant produces around 3.2 million tons of cement per year.

The headquarters of Hellenic Defense Vehicle Systems SA , a subsidiary of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, founded in 2001, is located in Volos

The state energy supplier DEI is planning (as of 2008) to build a new coal-fired power plant together with the German energy company RWE . There are protests against this.

  • Churches in Volos

  • Saint Constantine church

  • Metropolitan cathedral of Saint Nicholas

  • St. Cosmos of Aetolia Orthodox Church

  • St. Theodore Orthodox Church

  • St. Demetrius Orthodox Church

  • Holy Trinity Orthodox Church

Personalities

Twin cities

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Results of the 2011 census at the National Statistical Service of Greece (ΕΛ.ΣΤΑΤ) ( Memento from June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) ( MS Excel ; 2.6 MB)
  2. ↑ Monolingual large lexicon: Babiniotis, Georgios (Μπαμπινιώτης, Γεώργιος): Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας. 2nd edition Athens 2006, page 375
  3. ^ Helen F. Stamati: Milies: A Village on Mount Pelion, Athens 1989, p. 54-59.
  4. ↑ Nikos Tsafleris: Occupation and Resistance in Volos . ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 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. griechenland.diplo.de, lecture given at the German Consulate General in Thessaloniki on March 15, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.griechenland.diplo.de
  5. ↑ https://www.greeknewsonline.com/the-jewish-community-of-volos-during-the-war-years/
  6. ↑ a b c d e Inge Kimm: Greece's regional development and policy and the EC accession . Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-8204-9544-4 , pp. 292-293
  7. ^ A b c Franz Ronneberger, Georg Mergl: Social structure . In: Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Hrsg.): Südosteuropa-Handbuch . Volume III. Greece . Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980, ISBN 3-525-36202-1 , p. 388.
  8. ↑ a b Information from the Greek Travel Pages about Volos with census data from 1981 and 1991
  9. ^ National Statistical Office of Greece, 2001 Census ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ http://www.statistics.gr/portal/page/portal/ESYE/BUCKET/General/resident_population_census2011rev.xls ( Memento from June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ^ Company ( Memento from August 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ^ Armament Greece. In: Die Zeit , No. 2/2012
  13. ↑ Ralf Dreis: Blackout with RWE . In: Jungle World . No. March 12 , 2008 ( jungle-world.com [accessed June 28, 2008]). Blackout with RWE ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2008 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jungle-world.com