Thessaly & Epirus

Thessaly has been farmed for longer than almost anywhere in Europe: the Neolithic villages of Sesklo and Dimini, outside Volos, go back to the seventh millennium BC. Myth launched Jason's Argo from Iolcos on the same bay and put the centaurs on Pelion; history gave the plain to horse-breeding aristocrats whose cavalry rode with Alexander, and saw Caesar beat Pompey at Pharsalus in 48 BC. Across the Pindus the Molossian kings of Epirus guarded Dodona, the oldest oracle in Greece, and the most famous of them, Pyrrhus, won such costly battles against Rome around 280 BC that his name became a byword. Rome repaid Epirus in 167 BC by sacking its towns and enslaving 150,000 people, and Octavian built Nicopolis, near Preveza, to mark his victory at Actium.

When the crusaders took Constantinople in 1204 a Byzantine nobleman founded the Despotate of Epirus at Arta, and from the 14th century monks escaping the disorder of the plain built the rock-top monasteries of Meteora. The Ottomans took Thessaly from the 1390s and Ioannina, which surrendered on terms, in 1430. Ioannina's great age came under Ali Pasha, the Albanian-born governor who ruled much of Greece and Albania from its citadel from 1788, received Byron in 1809, crushed the Souliot clans — whose women are said to have danced off the cliff of Zalongo in 1803 — and was killed on the lake island on the sultan's orders in 1822.

Thessaly and Arta joined Greece in 1881; Ioannina followed in February 1913, after the fall of the Bizani forts. The great Thessalian estates provoked the farm workers' rising at Kileler in 1910 and the land reforms that followed. In the autumn of 1940 the Italian invasion was stopped in the Epirote mountains at Kalpaki, and in March 1944 the Germans deported Ioannina's ancient Greek-speaking Jewish community to Auschwitz. The Egnatia motorway ended Epirus' isolation in 2009; the Tempi rail crash of February 2023 killed 57 people, and Storm Daniel flooded the Thessalian plain that September.

The Pindus is a cultural watershed. Epirus looks to its mountains and to a musical tradition unlike any other in Greece: the clarinet leads slow, heavy dances, polyphonic song survives in the villages, and summer panigyria, the village feasts, go on late into the night. Its masons, from villages such as Pyrsogianni, were famed builders in stone, and Ioannina is known throughout Greece for its silverwork; a museum of the craft stands inside the citadel.

Two pastoral peoples belong to these mountains. The Vlachs, who speak Aromanian, a Latin-derived language, alongside Greek, have their capital at Metsovo, a town enriched by benefactors such as the Averoff and Tositsa families; the Sarakatsani, Greek-speaking shepherds who once moved each season between the plains and the high pastures, appeared in Zagori in the late 18th century. Ioannina was also the centre of the Romaniotes, Greek-speaking Jews settled in the city since Byzantine times; a small community remains, and their synagogue still stands inside the walls.

Thessaly is plainer-spoken farming country. The Karagounides, a Greek community of the plain, keep a distinctive costume for festivals, Tyrnavos marks Clean Monday with the bawdy bourani fertility feast, and Trikala honours its son Vassilis Tsitsanis, the great composer of rebetiko. Volos took in large numbers of Asia Minor refugees after 1922 and is known for its tsipouradika, where tsipouro comes with seafood. Pelion's villages are built round a paved square with a church, a fountain and a giant plane tree, and at Meteora the monasteries expect modest dress.

About a million people live in the two regions — roughly 690,000 in Thessaly and 320,000 in Epirus, which is among the poorest regions of the European Union. Larissa, with some 150,000 people, is the agricultural and military hub of the plain; Volos, smaller, is its industrial port and university town; Trikala and Karditsa serve the western plain. Ioannina, with about 110,000 in its municipality, is the largest city in Epirus and owes its youth to a university and a large teaching hospital; Arta, Preveza and the ferry port of Igoumenitsa are small towns.

Thessaly is known as the breadbasket of Greece, and the floods of September 2023 destroyed crops, livestock and homes around Karditsa, Palamas and Larissa on a scale from which the region is still recovering. Epirus lives on sheep and dairying — several of Greece's best-known feta brands are made here — and on tourism, which is concentrated on the coast in summer and in Zagori and Metsovo in winter.

The mountain villages are the other story. Many Zagori and Tzoumerka villages are far emptier than they were a century ago, especially in winter, and are kept alive by guesthouses and by families who return each August. City life follows the student calendar: Ioannina's lakeside and Larissa's pedestrianised centre are lined with cafés that fill from late afternoon, and the heat of the plain sends Larissa and Volos to the beaches of Agiokampos and Pelion at weekends.

Epirus is the home of the Greek pie. Its regional pites are many: blatsaria, kasiopita, kotopita, of chicken, and galatopita, a sweet milk pie. Metsovo makes a smoked PDO cheese, metsovone, and wine from the Averoff family's Katogi vineyard; Zitsa, north-west of Ioannina, makes a light, often sparkling white from the Debina grape. Ioannina's lake tavernas serve frogs' legs and eel, and the city is known for its baklava. The Amvrakikos Gulf supplies Preveza and Arta with fish and seafood, and galotyri, a soft, creamy cheese of sheep's or goat's milk, is made on both sides of the Pindus.

Thessaly cooks from the plain and from Pelion. Spetzofai, country sausage stewed with green peppers and tomato, is a Greek country dish; Pelion adds wild greens, bean soups, the apples of Zagora and chestnuts. In Volos the ritual is the tsipouradiko, where tsipouro comes with plates of seafood meze. Trikala is known for country sausages, Farsala for its halvas, Elassona for feta, and Tyrnavos for ouzo and tsipouro; Rapsani, on the lower slopes of Olympus, makes a notable red based on Xinomavro. On the Sporades, Skopelos has its coiled, fried cheese pie and its prunes.

The monasteries of Meteora come first. Six survive on the rock pillars above Kalambaka and Kastraki — the Great Meteoron and Varlaam are the largest, St Stephen is a convent, and Holy Trinity is reached by some 130 stone steps — and the old monks' footpaths link them below the road. To the south lie Trikala's old Varousi quarter, the fir forests of Pertouli and the reservoir of Lake Plastiras; to the east, the Pineios cuts through the Vale of Tempe between Olympus and Ossa.

Pelion, the hooked peninsula above Volos, has two dozen villages of tall stone mansions and slate roofs — Makrinitsa and Portaria facing the gulf, Tsagarada and Zagora on the wet Aegean side above the beaches of Mylopotamos and Damouchari — a small ski centre, and a narrow-gauge heritage train that runs from Ano Lechonia to Milies. From Volos boats reach the Sporades: Skiathos, with the pine-backed sand of Koukounaries, the beach of Lalaria and a ruined cliff-top kastro; greener Skopelos; and Alonissos, the base for a marine park that protects the Mediterranean monk seal.

Ioannina sits on Lake Pamvotis, its walled citadel holding the Aslan Pasha and Fethiye mosques and Ali Pasha's tomb; boats cross to the island where he died, and nearby are the Perama cave and the theatre of Dodona. To the north the Zagori villages — Monodendri, Vitsa, Kipi, Papingo — are joined by arched stone bridges around the Vikos Gorge, best seen from the Oxia and Beloi viewpoints or walked end to end in a long day; above it are the rock pools of Papingo and the Dragon Lake of Mount Tymfi. Metsovo, the Tzoumerka villages of Syrrako and Kalarrytes and the old bridges of Arta and Plaka lie to the east and south. On the coast, Parga's coloured houses climb to a Venetian castle beside Valtos beach, with the Sivota islets, the springs of the Acheron and the Roman ruins of Nicopolis within reach.