Ioannina Travel

Ioannina
The extreme mountainous locality gives a unique beauty and appearance to the nome of Ioannina. In the north section of the perfecture the GreekAlbanian borders- the Mt. Pindos range begins following the other mountain range of Grammos-Smolikos-Tymphi. After Metsovo, one sees, South Pindos along with Lakmos and the Athamanika Mountains. In the midst of all these mountain ranges various plateaus are generated, the most significant of those being the one where the city, and capital , Ioannina/ Yiannena is located.with the famed lake of Pamvotitha.
The Lake of Ioannina, or Limni Pambotis, is fed by torrents from the precipices of Mitsikeli. It is l0-ll km long, averages 3km across, and ranges in depth from 9-20m, with shallow reedy shores. The lake has an island (NISI) on which are numerous monasteries situated amid trees and flowers. One of these is the Monastery of the Prodhromos(St. John the Baptist) to the E of the little island village. Its most ancient parts (13C) are the katholikon and the E aisle. It was restored in the 16C, the 18C frescoes in the 19C. In the 16C Monastery of Pantaleimon, near by, Ali Pasha was killed on 17 January 1822; the bullet marks on the floor witness to his assassination. The whole island is registered by the Greek Archeological Service as a place of archeological significance.
HISTORY COMES ALIVE IN IOANNINA
loannina is first documented in 1020 and may have taken name and site from a monastery of St John the Baptist. loannina dates its importance, however, from the influx of refugees in 1205 from Constantinople and the Pelloponese and its consequent fortification by Michael I Angelos. An archbishopric was established here between 1284 and 1307. In 1345 Ioannina was captured by the Serb Stefan Dusan, proclaimed in the following year Emperor of Serbia and Greece. In 1431 it surrendered to the army of the Sultan Murad II. In 1618, after an abortive rising led by Dionysos ‘Skylosophos’ the fanatical Bp of Trikkala, the Christians were expelled from the citadel and their churches destroyed.
Its zenith was reached under Ali Pasha, (born in 1741 at the Albanian village of Tepeleni), a brilliant, resourceful and vindictive adventurer who alternately fought and served the Sultan of Turkey. Having assisted the Turks in their war of 1787 against Austria, he was made Pasha of Trikkala in 1788, in which year he seized Ioannina, then a town of 35,000 inhabitants, and made it his headquarters. In 1797 he allied himself with Napoleon, but the next year he took Preveza from the French. In 1803 he subdued the Suliots. After 1807 his dependence on the Porte was merely nominal. Byron visited Ioannina in 1809, while Col. W. M. Leake, the great topographer of Greece, was British resident, and Henry Holland was Ali Pasha’s doctor. In 1817 Ali entered into an alliance with the British, who gave him Parga. At length the Sultan decided to eliminate this daring rebel. He was captured at loannina after a siege and executed there in 1822. Two years before his death, besieged by Ismail Pasha, he had set fire to the town. The Congress of Berlin (1878) assigned Epirus to Greece but it remained in Turkish hands for over 35 more years. On 21 February 1913, the Greek army liberated Ioannina.