23 February 2025 – Ioannina part 1

Miles driven today = 54

Total Miles to date = 1,259

We had a drop of the wet stuff this morning.  The first proper rain we’ve had on this trip.  It was sufficient to produce puddles on the road but not enough to wash off the accumulation of road grime on the van.  That’s going to need a bit more in the way of elbow grease.

Our old friend the security dog was looking rather soggy and mournful at our departure but having bade her a fond farewell we headed inland to get ourselves onto the A2 toll road.  It’s a very impressive piece of engineering which runs all the way across Greece from the Ionian Sea in the West to the Turkish border in the East.  We swept over impressive viaducts and through tunnels of up to 3.5km in length.  We climbed through low cloud which reduced visibility to less than 100 metres for a short time before bursting through into glorious sunshine.

We gave ourselves a number of options for our stopover in Ioannina (sometimes phonetically spelt Yennina).  Our preference when staying in towns is usually to find somewhere relatively secure so we headed initially to the only Campsite in town at Camping Limnopoula.  Park4night caused some confusion as it stated that the campsite was closed until 1 April but some recent reviews indicated otherwise and lo and behold we were able to drive straight in to a lakeside pitch.  The price seems to be somewhat arbitrary but they do have an ACSI sticker in the window, despite not actually being in the 2025 book.  In the low season the reception is only open from 9 to 10am on a Sunday so we will pop in there tomorrow and provided they don’t completely shaft us we will stay another night.

We had lunch looking out over Lake Pamvotida, which is the largest in this part of Greece, and spotting assorted birdlife bobbing about.  Swans, geese, ducks, cormorants and coots all paraded past us plus some grebes indulging in their weird head shaking courtship ritual.

We are about a 20 minute walk from the castle so we found a path which followed the lake shore.  This is Nissi Island which is home to a number monasteries.  There is also a small settlement on the far side which has a museum and several recommended restaurants so, weather permitting, we’ll jump on a boat over there for a snoop around tomorrow.

The Castle is the oldest Byzantine Fortress in Greece which has been continuously occupied since its construction.  But it is most famous for being the centre of power for a chap called Ali Pasha, The “Lion of Ioannina”. 

Ali Pasha was an Albanian Muslim leader who seized Ioannina in 1788.  At that time the city had a population of some 30,000 people and as such was thought to have been the largest in Greece.  From here Ali Pasha created a fiefdom which covered large chunks of Western Greece and modern day Albania.  He was a cruel ruler but he is nevertheless still revered for standing up against the common foe of the Ottoman Empire. 

On passing through the city walls the first building we came across was the Knights’ Palace, built during the time of Ali Pasha’s rule.  It has since been a riding school but nowadays holds the Historical Archives for the Epirus Region, of which Ioannina is the principal town.

The Aslan Pasha Mosque was built in 1618 at the time of the Ottoman rule.  Nowadays it also houses the Municipal Ethnographic Museum of Ioannina.

This was the library of the Ottoman period.  It’s in a rather sad and dangerous state of disrepair but hopefully somebody will get around to renovating it in the same way as they currently are with the neighbouring bathhouse from the same period.

Abandoned cannon barrels.

A rather haphazard collection of inscribed stone tablets and vases.

I was intrigued by the holes in these cannonballs so I went and stuck my fingers in one and found that they are actually hollow.  A quick Google revealed that they were often filled with shrapnel to increase their effectiveness as anti-personnel projectiles.  Gruesome!

The inner citadel or “Its Kale” forms the South Eastern portion of the Castle and is effectively a fort within a fort.

The building in the foreground is a silica warehouse and the one beyond used to be barracks for the soldiers.  It’s now a café.

The Fethiye Tzami or Victory Mosque sits at the highest point within the castle walls and has fabulous views out across the lake and the mountains beyond.

In 1821 the Ottoman Sultan got fed up with Ali Pasha’s subordination and sent an army to capture him.  He was lured out of his fortress under the false promise of lenient surrender terms but was captured, shot and beheaded and his head was carted off to Istanbul.  The rest of him is buried here next to his wife beside the Fethiye Tzami.

The Byzantine Museum stands on the site of Ali Pasha’s Seraglio and also, subsequent to that, a military hospital.  It was here, on 25^th March 1944, that the Castle’s Jewish inhabitants were rounded up by the Nazis and shipped off to Concentration Camps.

The Bastion Walls of the inner citadel.

This section, which includes an old kitchen area has been refurbished and now includes a silversmithing museum.  My daughter, Lucy, is a maker working in silver so this was top of my list of places I wanted to see while in Ioannina.  Silversmithing was a major source of wealth for Ioannina in the 19^th and early 20th Centuries and there are still reckoned to be 90 skilled artisans working here.

The downstairs section of the museum covered the process of producing silver from mining to creating the raw silver sheet, wire and ingots, to the tools and skills employed by the silversmiths in creating their art.

This small silver box is a fantastic example of fine filigree work.

Upstairs were lots of exhibits showing off many impressive historical pieces.

These are bridal adornments.

A huge embossed buckle measuring some 15 inches across.

Snuff boxes on the right together with pen cases with integrated ink pots.

A ceremonial sword with its decorated scabbard.

We were starting to flag but a couple of double Greek coffees soon had us bouncing of the Byzantine walls again.

One final view out across the lake before we made our way out of the Castle.

The Castle used to be moated on its landward side but this has long since been filled in and the street that now takes its place is filled with tourist tat shops.  If you ever feel you need to have a penis shaped keyring or bottle opener in your life then this is the place to come.

But we did pop into a baclava shop and bought a small selection box of their wares.

We have the gentle pitter patter of rain on the van roof again now but all in all it’s been a fabulous day.  The only slight downer is we have another minor technical issue, this time with the kitchen tap, which sporadically stops talking to the water pump.  We’re pretty sure it’s a microswitch issue but we don’t have a spare.  Note to self to buy a couple for future trips and we do have a workaround in case it packs up altogether.

24 February 2025 - Ioannina part 2