One of the great differences between the Ancient Greek and Roman civilisations is that whilst the former were predominantly seafarers (the exception of course, was Alexander the Great), the Romans preferred to travel by land. The Ancient Greek civilisation was therefore largely confined to the Mediterranean, whilst Roman civilisation extended throughout Europe, Asia Minor, into the Caucasus, North Africa and the Middle East. And, whilst the journeys made by the Greeks have long been lost in the waves of the Mediterranean, the steps of the Romans are often just a few feet or inches beneath our feet. And one of these great Roman routes is the Via Egnatia, which I set out to discover this summer.
The Via Egnatia was the continuation of the Via Appia on the Eastern side of the Adriatic, passing through Ancient Illyria, Macedonia and Thracia to Constantinople. With a total distance of 696 miles, it was constructed by the Romans in the second century BC as a route through harsh territory inhabited by unruly peoples to reach the Eastern Mediterranean and circumvent a journey that otherwise took several weeks by sea.
In antiquity, it became known for the road along which St Paul travelled on his journey from Philippi to Thessaloniki, Mark Antony and Octavian pursued the armies of Cassius and Brutus along it to the decisive battle of Philippi (Horace, as a soldier in Brutus’ army also made the journey). In his exile from Rome, Cicero also travelled along the Vie Egnatia through Illyria.
Then, throughout the fourth and fifth centuries AD, the Via Egnatia fell into disrepair and the Emperor Justinian invested considerable energies in its repair.
In the middle ages, the Norman Robert Guiscard (brother of Roger I of Sicily) engaged the Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos in battle at Durazzo. The crusaders travelled along it. Bohemond I (the son of Robert Guiscard) captured Edessa. And in the later Middle Ages, it was also the route taken by the Turks as their way into Europe.
In more recent times, Edward Lear made the journey from Thessaloniki to Berat in Albania travelling along it.
Nowadays, the route passes through modern day Albania, North Macedonia, northern Greece and north-west Turkey and though little remains of the ancient road itself (it is either buried beneath the modern road surface or beneath farmers’ fields) its trajectory serves as a narrative of some of our most turbulent history. On this occasion however, my motive for making the journey was less to uncover the history, but simply to work out the practicalities of making the journey. I was on a tight schedule and hadn’t given myself nearly enough time to uncover the details of my destinations. I travelled more fleetingly and superficially than I ought to have, omitting both the start (Durres) and end (Istanbul) of the Via Egnatia from my journey. But what follows, is a short diary of my travels…
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Albania to Lake Ohrid
I was to catch the bus from Tirana to Ohrid and anxious not to delay my schedule by not being able to find a ticket, I had bought the ticket a couple of days earlier. My anxiety had been unnecessary as it turned out as the bus was only half full.
Leaving Tirana, we travelled along a good motorway for the first 40km to Elbasan until the bus turned onto minor road and begn to wind its way uphill. The landscape was spectacular. Smallholdings shaded by walnut trees nestled in the shadows of vast mountains. On our right, a steep drop fell away to a gushing river. The road climbed upwards until it seemed it could barely go any higher. Then, as some kind of mirage, a vast sea appeared on the right hand side of the bus. Of course, it was not a sea at all, but the flat expanse of Lake Ohrid – 18 miles long and 9 miles wide – and apparently, one of the oldest lakes in the world.
A few hundred metres later the bus pulled up at the frontier post and the driver walked down the aisle collecting our passports. He then surrendered the thick tome of his passengers’ documents to the border guard and drove off. Fortunately, he pulled up again a hundred metres further on and went back to collect them. Returning to the bus he tossed the bundle at the young girl sitting behind him and left it to us to sort out the rest. All this had been done without a word, but no one had been hauled off the bus, and we all made it into North Macedonia – a country about which I knew almost nothing beyond the terrific 90s film Before the Rain.
Ohrid
From the bus station at Ohrid, and despite the heat, I decided to walk the couple of kilometres to my hotel. The outskirts of the town were unimpressive but as I began to climb the hill to the castle, I became aware of the fairy-tale setting of the town. The pristine houses, the manicured gardens, some superb churches convinced me I had stumbled on something very special.
Given my lack of time, my main mission had been to find the church of St John Kaneo. Perched on a bluff of rock above the the lake in a chocolate-box location it is the iconic photograph of the whole region and one that I wanted for our website.
In the event though, after wandering the labyrinthine streets of the upper town, passing by the church of Saint Dimitri, the Roman theatre, Tia Samoli’s fortress and the church of Saint Clement, I had already seen so much wonder it was difficult to believe anything could surpass it. Inside, the church of St John Kaneo was dark and did not hold my attention for long, but outside, with its obvious Byzantine and Armenian influences, it was one of the most beautifully sited churches I have seen, anywhere..
Walking back into the lower town, I quickly realised that Ohrid has become the holiday destination for most of Turkey. Almost all of the toursits there were Turkish. And at the pizza restaurant later, the table next to me was occupied by three generations of a Turkish family. The headscarf women dragged on their cigarettes whilst the men ordered litres of beer at the same time excusing themselves that it was only because they were on holiday. Even they, it seems, had to let their hair down.
The following morning, my bus to Bitola was not due to depart until midday so I occupied myself with some admin at the hotel and then headed to the bus station to get my ticket. Buying the bus ticket was easy; the bus ride was to be the worst experience of the whole week. The seats and tickets were numbered, but it turned out that the bus was overbooked by at least as much again. To my later regret, I actually got a seat, but in retrospect, I would gladly have given this up to travel even the following day: I was surrounded by a group of teenagers on their way home from a night out and who must have ingested enormous quantities of drugs. They spent they next three hours laughing, cackling and talking in quite undecipherable nonsense. Even the patience of the locals was stretched to breaking point.
Getting off the bus in Bitola then, was a huge relief. And I walked the short distance to my accommodation in the city centre.
Bitola and Heraclea Lynkestis
Even if it were not for the fact that it lies on the Via Egnatia, the archaeological remains at Heraclea Lynkestis a couple of kilometres outside the town would be a reason to come to Bitola. However, storm clouds were beginning to gather over the mountains and the following day I was anxious to leave early, so I wanted to see as much as I could that same afternoon.
In my usual state of unpreparedness, I had not read up on the site beforehand, so what I saw came as something of surprise. There was a reasonable-sized Roman theatre and a few other ruins, but in their midst, open to the elements were some superb late Roman mosaics.
The designs featured animals, birds and trees. Deer featured prominently, but there was also a dog tethered to a tree, a lion, a bull, a boar, an antelope and a zebra. Among the birds there were peacocks, pigeons, partridges, ducks, swans whilst the trees were mainly fruit trees: pomegranates, vines, apples. And whilst the workmanship might not quite have been what we witness at Piazza Armerina in Sicily, they were nevertheless impressive. They were also extensive: spread over about eight different rooms in total, some of them up to ten metres wide. Just in themselves, they were worth the visit to Bitola.
I walked back into the town with the intention of spending the rest of the afternoon wandering its streets and I got as far as the main thoroughfare (which, I wondered, had once been the route of the Via Egnatia?) which was refreshingly cosmopolitan. An eighteenth century church, whose facade aligned with the shop-fronts dominated the scene, but there were also the domes and minarets of two mosques and the street was filled with so many cafes that few European cities could outnumber. Just as I arrived in the town however, a colossal wind blew up and swept away the umbrellas, chairs, tables and plants away in one enormous gust. I dived for cover into one of the cafes, where I remained, nursing a beer, as the storm lashed the town. During a faint lull in the storm I made a dash for my room and there I remained for the rest of the afternoon.
Only in the later part of the evening, once the storm had subsided did I venture out to search for food – which I found in huge quantities at a large tented restaurant which looked as if it was feeding the town’s whole population. Tables the lengths of cricket pitches accommodated an assortment of guests of every age. It was impossible to guess what common occasion had bought the members of each table together. Almost as numerous were the cohorts of waiters wheeling forth trolleys of food and drinks. It was a riotous atmosphere.
Onwards to Greece
Being a Sunday, I was anxious to leave early the next morning as I had no idea what the bus schedules would be like once I got to Greece. Nor, for that matter, did I really know how I was going to get to Greece. Nevertheless, Bitola had impressed me so much that I rose early to take one last round of the town – in sunlight this morning.
I had resigned myself to having to take a taxi to the Greek border – only about fifteen kilometres away, but when my hotel receptionist rang the taxi company for me, the driver agreed to take me all the way to Florina for only an extra ten euros. It was from Florina that I was hoping to catch an onward bus to Edessa.
The driver picked me up from my hotel and we drove round the corner to a piazza where the taxi rank was located. He parked up and started dismantling his taxi: unplugging wires, removing his taxi sign and taxi meter, his GPS and his licence number were all stowed away in the taxi office. He apparently had to destroy all evidence of him taking me as a paying passenger. It didn’t bode well for the journey, I thought.
In the end though, the border formalities of crossing back into Europe were a breeze. The Greek policewoman merely asked the driver if he was carrying any alcohol or cigarettes and then waved us on our way. A short time later we were in Florina, and to my good fortune, there was a bus for Edessa leaving in just over an hour – just enough time for a tiropita and a coffee.
The road from Florina to Edessa passes through endless pastureland and cotton fields. I strained my eyes out of the bus window hoping I might catch a glimpse of some roman cobbles. But the truth is, it’s impossible to know whether the modern road is built on top of the original Via Egnatia, or alongside it. And if it were alongside it, it would long have been covered beneath the surface of the soil.
Edessa
I arrived in Edessa at what, to me was early afternoon, but what to the Greeks was evidently Sunday lunchtime. Every square inch of the main square was taken up with tables of people tucking into souvlaki, gyros or moussaka. I pressed on to find my lodgings.
Until now, I had stayed in the cheapest places I could find, but in Edessa I had booked a room in a hotel which I hoped we would be able to use for our groups. It turned out to be an excellent choice and I was happy to have a reasonable room for the night. But it was only when I opened the curtains and walked onto the balcony did I realise just what an impressive place Edessa is. It occupies the edge of a steep escarpment, thickly wooded with mulberry, walnut, oak and alder, that leads down to the vast plain which reaches as far as Thessaloniki. Over to my right, eighty kilometres distant, was the peak of Mt Olympos. And down in the plain beneath me, shaded by trees, was the archaeological site of ancient Edessa. If I threw a stone from my balcony, I might just have reached it, but when I looked at the map, I realised there were no paths down through the thick jungle. The only way to reach it was via a long winding road of 3km. Despite the heat of the day, I set off at once and was lucky to arrive 15 minutes before closing time.
I think it is true to say, that the archaeological remains at Edessa are perhaps the least impressive of any along the way and they didn’t detain me for long. In fact, it was fortunate as the custodian was anxious to lock up but she kindly gave me a lift back up the hill into the centre of town.
To be honest though, I was in too flippant a mood to be weighed by archaeology that afternoon and I set out to explore the town. A sign pointed some waterfalls and as I got nearer, I realised there were multiple chases of fast flowing waters channeled between the cafes. Inevitably, as everywhere in Greece, there were cafes. But I was unprepared for the spectacular waterfalls that result as the water tumbles over the edge of the escarpment. It’s a cause for its own celebration.
I needed to eat and also to plan my next day’s journey, so, after a delicious souvlaki, I headed back to the hotel for a rest. But in Greece it is impossible to stay inside in the evening and inevitably I was lured to one of the cafes.
From Edessa, the Via Egnatia continues to Thessaloniki via Pella – the capital of the Macedonian Kings. And whilst in the vicinity it would be foolish not to also make a detour to Vergina and the grave of Philip II. But I had covered all these on earlier visits and so today I was planning to head directly to Thessaloniki and from there to catch a bus to Kavala.
The road to Thessaloniki is somewhat monotonous, passing through mile after mile of cotton fields. But there is one curiosity… the frequent mounds of earth or tumuli. At first, you believe they are too many, and too large to be tombs. And if they are tombs, they look too important not to have been excavated and open the the public. But, in fact, tombs of the ancient Macedonian kings are exactly what they are. It is a reminder of the history through which one is passing.
In Thessaloniki, I changed buses at the main bus terminal and caught an onward bus to Kavala. Travelling East along the northern shores of lakes Koronia and Volvi there were beautiful views. And then along the coast road of the gulf of Orfani some fine views to the south and Mount Athos. It was a lot of travelling for one day, but it was the only way that would allow me to fit in everything I needed to. Fortunately, I had started early and caught the 6 o’clock bus from Edessa.
In fact Greek buses are excellent and the connections between towns are frequent. Nonetheless, there is one word you soon learn to pick out in the passenger announcements “καθυστέρηση”: “delay”. You learn it as quickly as you learn to say hello and thank you. But if the buses are frequent, timetables, it turns out, are not. It is as if they really want you to ask. And if you do happen to chance on a timetable, reading it is not for the feint hearted. Part of the problem is that they tend to be printed in capital letters, which adds an extra layer of obscurity to them.
Kavala and Philippi
Kavala turns out to be a splendid town with plenty to interest one. It is famous for the splendid “Kamares” aqueducts built by the Romans and there are also the old warehouses, which are the vestiges of the tobacco industry. (Apparently, Kavala was once one of the biggest tobacco producing towns in the world). The other point of interest is Kavala’s Ottoman past and the houses and the architecture of the citadel are absorbing – in particular the Imaret – which was once an Ottoman caravansaray.
One doubt was still hanging over me. In two days time I was due to be crossing into Turkey and I was still not quite sure how I was going to do it. I knew there are buses from Thessaloniki to Istanbul and indeed also from Kavala. But there was no bus I could find that would go to Edirne. Compounding the situation was that I had booked to stay the following night in Xanthi and the attendant at the bus station in Kavala had told me it is not possible to get to Turkey from Xanthi. All of which suggested that I should arrange to arrive in Xanthi as early in the day as possible.
And furthermore, I didn’t want to leave Kavala without visiting Philippi – the nearby archaeological site – and getting to Philippi and back by public bus from Kavala would involve endless waiting and take up most of the morning. It seemed as if I was going to have to give up either going to Xanthi or going to Philippi.
I walked down to the taxi rank to bargain with the drivers with the idea of getting a taxi to Philippi and be back in Kavala in time for the late morning bus departure for Xanthi. One of them agreed to do the round trip for €30 as long as I only spent half an hour at Philippi – not really sufficient for a proper visit, but enough to get the idea. But it turned out that my solution was to reap other rewards.
Until now, finding an original piece of the Via Egnatia had eluded me. My taxi driver, Ilias, was a typically loquacious and friendly Greek taxi driver and when I told him of my journey following the Via Egnatia, he asked if I had seen any of the original road. It took little persuasion to get him to take me to see it.
At the end of a narrow side street, the road evaporated into a dusty track and then a short distance further began a cobbled track leading into the woods. We got out of the taxi and Ilias told me that as kids they had used to ride their bicycles down it without knowing what it was. It was only in the last few years that archaeologists had excavated it. The cobbles were smaller than I might have expected – eighteen inches in length at the most. And they were also unevenly shaped and irregularly placed in the ground with quite large gaps between them, which made walking on them more difficult than I might have imagined. The road was not wide – perhaps 2 metres, but nevertheless, this was it – this was the Via Egnatia I had come to find! There wasn’t time to walk far along it, but a short stretch was enough to feel the thrill of walking in the steps of the ancients.
Back in Kavala, I had just enough time for a coffee before my bus departed for Xanthi.
Xanthi
Xanthi is not actually on the Via Egnatia, but I was curious to visit as it is the north-easternmost town of any size in Greece. It was not a long journey – an hour and a half perhaps, but by the time I arrived I was hot and hungry. I dumped my stuff in my hotel room and went out to look for something to eat. Finding food in Greece is usually the least of one’s problems. But for some reason in Xanthi, there were a million cafes and nowhere to get anything to eat. I wandered around getting more hot and bothered until in the end I found a joint that served food. I asked for a souvlaki and salad – but the only salad they had was french fries and the only souvlaki they had was beef (in Greece, it is usually pork or chicken) and when it arrived it turned out to be four huge skewers of beef – more meat than I would usually eat in a week.
In the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the region around Xanthi was where most of the Christians coming from Turkey were settled – and they spoke not Greek but Turkish. Here in Xanthi, one hears both Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian spoken in almost equal measures and in the restaurant, clients and staff were speaking Greek and Turkish interchangeably.
But my meal had not settled me. It was too much meat for lunchtime and Xanthi itself had not made the impression on me that I might have hoped. I went back to the hotel to attend to the mounting backlog of emails for the rest of the afternoon.
It wasn’t until 9 o’clock that evening, that restlessness got the better of me and I went out to stretch my legs. I followed the signs for the “Παλαιά Πόληι” : “Old Town” and it was only then that it dawned on me that what I had seen at lunchtime was not the old part of town at all.
In the town square, I came across of a group of women – some of whom who were wearing headscarves in the fashion that was prevalent in Turkey perhaps 30 years ago. But as I walked past them, I could hear they were speaking Greek.
I kept walking up. At the top of the hill was a tangle of narrow streets between old Greek houses that had been turned into cafes. And on the streets themselves there were tables and chairs. It seemed as if the whole town was here. With blissful unconcern that this was a Tuesday evening – and not even the weekend, – it seemed as if the whole of Xanthi was here to meet their friends and enjoy a late-night coffee. Nowhere else in the world do people have the ability to pass their life away in cafes as the Greeks. It was a joyful scene.
Onwards to Turkey
I left Xanthi on the six o’clock bus the following morning. I was heading for Alexandroupolis where I was hoping I would find a bus to take me north to the Orestiada – the last town before the Turkish border. Still half asleep I gazed out of the window and succumbed to the feeling there was a lot more to appreciate of Xanthi than my hasty visit had shown me.
I was still not yet wide awake when out of the left side of the bus, I saw what I mistook for a Turkish village – the primitive cubes of houses were made in wattle and daub and there was a mosque with a stunted minaret. It looked every inch like many of the villages I had seen in Anatolia. A Turkish village in Greece, I thought to myself. But the more I thought this over the more of a mystery it became. The people who had been migrated to Greece from Turkey during the population exchanges of 1923 were Christians – albeit Turkish-speaking. I could find no explanation for that minaret until a few days later when I was reading about the Pomaks – Bulgarian speaking Muslims that can be found in northeastern Greece, Bulgaria and north-western Turkey. The bus sped on through the breaking dawn and I didn’t have the energy or the presence of mind to mark on my map where we were. That minaret remains a mystery, but perhaps this was one of the Pomak villages?
We arrived in Alexandroupolis at eight o’clock and to my great delight there was a bus for Orestiada leaving an hour later.
A few kilometres outside Alexandroupolis there is a fork in the road, the right fork goes straight on to cross the border at Kipi, and from there into Turkey and onwards to Istanbul, but my bus was to take me northwards, following the line of the river Evros (which is the border between Greece and Turkey).
This was to be my last bus-ride in Greece for the time being and I was feeling melancholy. I had enjoyed my three days in Greece and wished it could have been extended. But I still had the problem of how to get across the border. And meanwhile, the bus wound its way though every conceivable detour.
In due course we arrived at Orestiada. There were no onward buses from here. This was the end of the line. And at the taxi rank, there were no taxis either. No one was in much of a hurry to leave this place it seemed. I padded the streets looking for a taxi and eventually found one. I asked the driver to take me to the border. He seemed reluctant and asked to see my passport. For some reason, he didn’t seem optimistic. But what did it matter to him, I thought?
It was a fifteen minute ride to the border. I paid the driver and got out. I walked towards the passport kiosk. It was empty. Evidently not many people were going from Greece into Turkey that day. A cheery Greek policeman attending to the inbound traffic called me over.
“Where is you car?”
“I don’t have a car. I’m on foot.”
“You can’t cross on foot any more. You used to be able to. But not any more. Or you can cross on a bicycle – but only if you are wearing a helmet…”
“So, what do I do?”
“You can hitchhike?” he suggested with a cheery smile.
There was not much sign of any traffic going from Greece to Turkey but I put down my bag and resigned myself to waiting, albeit in the mid-day sun with little shade nearby. Half an hour went by and then an elderly Greek gentleman drove up in a battered Peugeot.
“Can I hitch a lift to Turkey with you?” I pleaded.
He signalled for me to get in and we drove the ten metres to the passport check. We handed over our documents. Along with my passport, I handed over my Italian residency card and asked the policeman to kindly not stamp my passport. The policeman ignored me and focused on the Greek gentleman’s passport which he duly handed back a few moments later.
“Why do you live in Italy?” he asked somewhat aggressively. It was not an easy question to answer without telling him my life story.
“I have family there,” I told him without taxing my Greek too much.
“And where did you enter Greece?”
“From Skopje.” I was cautious to use the Greek name for North Macedonia.
“And where did you enter to Skopje?”
“From Albania.” It was sounding like an increasingly unlikely story.
“And how did you learn Greek?” The question was not meant as a compliment.
“From the internet during the pandemic.”
He returned to looking at my documents and staring at his computer. It was all taking a long time and a queue of cars was building behind us. I was feeling guilty for holding up my driver. But my driver was unfazed. He wasn’t in a rush. He just threw up his hands: “In the old times it wasn’t like this…”
The policeman came out of the kiosk and signalled for me to get out of the car with my bag. There was a table by the side of the road and placing my bag on the table, he proceeded to unpack everything until the table looked more like a teenager’s bedroom. He thumbed through my notebook and then asked to look through the photos on my phone.
“Why are you going to Turkey?”
I could tell he didn’t believe any of my story. But at last, he gave up and returned to his kiosk leaving me to repack the rubble of my bag. I got back into the car and apologised to the driver. The policeman handed me back my documents and waved us through the barrier. My Greek driver immediately pulled up at a anonymous building on the other side of the barrier.
“Let’s buy some raki,” he beckoned me out of the car and as we walked through the door of the building I realised it was a duty-free shop. The least I could do, I thought, was to pay for the two bottles of raki he had selected for himself, but he was not going to hear of it.
Back in the car, as we drove through the reed-beds of the no man’s land between Greece and Turkey he explained to me:
“Last year, Turkey just allowed anyone to cross their border and these reed-beds were full with illegal immigrants waiting for their chance to cross into Greece. That policeman thought you were a spy and he told me to take straight into Turkey and make sure you didn’t take any photographs.”
It was at the Turkish border where I realised he also spoke fluent Turkish and from then on we conversed in Turkish and he chatted freely. He told me that he did the journey every week: crossing into Turkey to buy “stuff” that he would bring back to Greece to sell. I didn’t venture to ask him what kind of “stuff” he meant. We drove over the Evros river – or Meriç as it is called in Turkish – and into Edirne.
We both had to change some money so before we said goodbye, he offered to walk me to the change office. As we strolled down the main street, he stopped frequently to greet his fellow Greeks – to ask them how they were and how long they were in town for. I quickly realised that for many of these Greeks, coming into Edirne from the villages around Orestiada was like popping into Salisbury from Coombe Bissett. We changed our money and shook hands to say goodbye.
“I gave you a lift because I could see you were a good person,” he commended me. Our salutations were heartfelt.
Edirne
Edirne, the ancient Adrianapoli, turned out to be a marvel and I berated myself for never having visited before. As the Ottoman capital immediately prior to the fall of Constantinople, it turned out to have almost as much to interest the visitor as Istanbul – and without all the hassle and bustle. Unfortunately, it’s main site of interest – the magnificent Selimiye mosque built by Mimar Sinan in 1575 – is currently undergoing restoration and only a very small part of the interior is visible. But even though the minarets are sheathed in scaffolding, its magnificence is still easy to behold.
I had given myself a whole day to enjoy this wonderful architecture and I was pleased to have done so. I had brought along guidebooks to Albania and North Macedonia along with extensive maps of my whole route and these had already taken up a large space of my rucksack and so I had skipped on bringing a guide book for Turkey. But in Edirne, I regretted not having brought more literature. And so it was that it was only late in the afternoon that I came across the Synagogue – perhaps the most unlikely building to come across in the city.
My journey was coming to an end. Although the Via Egnatia continues on into Istanbul, these were all sights I had visited multiple times in the past and so felt it unnecessary to revisit them on this occasion. The following morning I was to catch a bus to the airport in Istanbul from whence I was to catch a flight to the Black Sea for another excursion.
But I was sad to leave the Via Egnatia. It had provided the context for a fascinating journey and one that had given me numerous new rich experiences. But most of all, it had shown me the connectedness of all the places I had passed through. I had passed through four countries and over three borders, but it could have been that they had all be the same country.
Bettany Hughes, in her 2015 radio programmes on the Via Egnatia points out how the Via Egnatia has always been about the movement of people – both from Rome to Constantinople as well as, more commonly nowadays, as from East to West.
As much as this is certainly true, my own impression of the Via Egnatia was how much – despite the three international borders – it unifies the peoples living along its route.
