Ioannina Castle

Start with your feet. The paving inside these walls is old, uneven stone, worn smooth by centuries of shoes, hooves and cart wheels. Listen for a moment. You may hear water lapping somewhere below, a scooter in a narrow lane, a radio through an open window. That mix matters. This is not an empty ruin on a hill. It is a fortified neighbourhood where people still live, hang their washing and park their cars.

You are standing on a rocky promontory that pushes out into Lake Pamvotis, in Epirus, the mountainous northwest of Greece. Water once guarded the castle on three sides. On the landward side a deep moat once added more protection, though much of it has since been filled in. Across the lake rises the long grey ridge of Mount Mitsikeli. On a still morning its shape lies on the water like a second mountain.

The story of the castle goes back to the Byzantine Empire, the Greek-speaking eastern continuation of the Roman world. Fortifications stood here in the Byzantine era, and the town of Ioannina grew up around them. After the Fourth Crusade broke Constantinople apart in the early thirteenth century, this region became part of the Despotate of Epirus. That was a Byzantine Greek state, and for a time Ioannina was one of its important strongholds.

Then comes a turning point that many visitors miss. In 1430 the city did not fall to the Ottomans in a bloody siege. Its leaders surrendered by agreement with the Ottoman commander Sinan Pasha. In return, the Christian population kept a set of privileges, including the right to keep living inside the walls. For almost two centuries, that agreement shaped daily life here — Christians, Muslims and Jews sharing one fortified town.

That balance broke in 1611. A Greek Orthodox bishop known as Dionysios the Philosopher led a failed uprising against Ottoman rule. The revolt was crushed, and the consequences were harsh. Christians lost their right to live inside the castle. From then on, the walled quarter belonged mainly to Muslim and Jewish families, while Christians settled in the town outside. Walk the lanes today and you are walking through the result of that one rebellion.

Not long after, in 1618, the Aslan Pasha Mosque rose on the castle's northern high point. Look for its dome and slender minaret above the trees. Tradition holds that it was built on the site of a church destroyed after the uprising. Today the mosque no longer serves as a place of worship. It holds the Municipal Ethnographic Museum, with displays on the Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities of the city.

The walls you see now, however, carry the mark of one man more than any other — Ali Pasha of Tepelena. He was an Albanian-born Ottoman governor who ruled from Ioannina in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was ambitious, clever and often brutal. He controlled a large part of the western Balkans, and European travellers came to his court. The poet Lord Byron visited him in 1809 and wrote about the meeting.

Ali Pasha rebuilt and strengthened the fortifications, giving the walls much of their present form. His seat of power was the inner citadel in the southeast corner, known as Its Kale. The name comes from Turkish and means inner castle. Go through its gate and the atmosphere changes. There are trees, open lawns and stone buildings, and the noise of the town fades behind thick walls.

Inside Its Kale stands the Fethiye Mosque, its name meaning the mosque of conquest. Beside it, under a small iron cage-like canopy, is the grave of Ali Pasha himself. His end came in 1822, after the Ottoman sultan turned against him. He was killed on the small island you can see out in the lake. Visitors can take a boat there and see the rooms where his final hours played out.

Locals also tell a darker story about Ali Pasha. According to a popular tale, a young woman named Kyra Frosini and a group of other women were drowned in the lake on his orders around 1801. Folk songs and later novels kept the story alive. Historians debate the details and the motives. Still, if you ask someone in town about the lake, there is a good chance this tale will come up.

The castle was also home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in Greece, the Romaniotes. They were Greek-speaking Jews whose roots in these lands go back many centuries. Their synagogue still stands inside the walls, a quiet white building on a residential lane. In 1944, during the German occupation, almost the entire community was deported. Very few came back. The building remains a place of memory.

Inside the inner citadel you will also find the Byzantine Museum, with icons, carved stone and other objects from the region. Nearby, in one of the old bastions, a museum is dedicated to silversmithing. That is a craft Ioannina has been known for over a long period. Back in the town, small workshops still sell filigree jewellery made from fine twisted silver wire. The craft is not only behind glass. It still lives in the streets around you.

As you walk, notice how the castle changes from one corner to the next. Here are rough grey walls with arrow slits and heavy gates. There are tiled roofs, potted geraniums and a cat asleep on a step. The lake is never far away. Through gaps in the stone you see flashes of water and the dark line of the mountain. Few fortresses feel this lived-in.

Before you leave, find a spot on the walls facing the lake and stay still for a minute. Watch the light move across the water and the small boats crossing to the island. Behind you are mosques, a synagogue, a ruler's grave and the homes of ordinary families. As you walk back out through the gate, listen again to your footsteps on the old stone, and to the town that grew up around it.