Drama

Drama is a city of springs. They run out of the limestone at the foot of Falakro in dozens of places, some channelled into public fountains with the water permanently cold, some just seeping into the pavements, and they are the reason the ancient city was called Hydrama — rich in water. The centre is a long, low, Ottoman-grid town of tobacco warehouses and two-storey houses, and it was the tobacco that made it: by the turn of the twentieth century Drama was one of the richest tobacco districts in the Balkans, and the Marble House of the Anastasiadis family, with its warehouse and its courtyard, is what that money looks like when it survives. What makes the city unusual in Greece is what grew up around the tobacco. There is a Catholic cathedral in the middle of an overwhelmingly Orthodox country, a synagogue that is now a ruin, and the Sadirvan mosque, whose minaret dates from the fifteenth century and whose walls carry folk paintings of the town — a rare survivor of the Ottoman civic architecture of eastern Macedonia. Walking the old quarter past the fountains at Agia Varvara, you move between all of it in about twenty minutes. It is not a destination anyone comes to on a holiday itinerary, and that is rather the point: Drama is a real Greek city with an unusually layered past, and it is at its best when nobody is performing it for anybody.

Drama’s name is a puzzle of translations. The ancient settlement here was Dyrama or Hydrama, both meaning rich in water, and some scholars identify it with Drabescus; the modern name arrived through the Slavonic. The Greeks knew it as a station on the Via Egnatia, the Roman road from Dyrrhachium to Constantinople, and in Roman times it was a vicus of the colony of Philippi — which is why a second-century Macedonian tomb turned up in a cellar on Troias Street in 1978. Under the Byzantines Drama became a fortified city and a prosperous junction on the same route, and it stayed important through the Komnenian period. Then it changed hands repeatedly: the Franks held it from 1206, the Tsar of Bulgaria took it in 1230, the Byzantines recovered it in 1245, the Serbs came in 1344, and the Ottomans in the early 1380s. Under Ottoman rule Drama became a tobacconist’s town of the first order, and in the eighteenth century it replaced Philippi as the chief town of the plain. The Greek community built its schools and its churches through the tobacco money; the oldest surviving monument in the city, the church of Agia Sophia, dates from the tenth century and was later a mosque. The city was taken by Bulgarian troops in October 1912 and again during the First World War, and after the departure of the Turkish population in 1922 its numbers almost doubled with Greek refugees from Asia Minor. Drama is today the capital of its regional unit, the economic centre of a district that holds about sixty per cent of the unit’s people, and an army corps headquarters.

Drama stands about thirty kilometres inland on the northern edge of the plain, and the nearest coast is the Aegean north of Kavala, something over fifty kilometres away. What it has instead is water in a different key: the limestone springs of Falakro run cold through the city, and the Angitis rises on the slopes above it. The regional unit is compact and well worth driving. The Paranthos canyon on the road east is a gorge cut deep and narrow, with a cave in its wall, and a little further on the First World War fort of Nikiforos stands above the road with its emplacements intact. Higher, Mount Falakro holds snow well into spring and carries one of the region’s ski centres. On the Angitis, the cave of Maara has been giving up Palaeolithic finds for decades, and the river runs on through the wetland below the town. The plain itself grows the watercress and the corn that end up in the city’s kitchens.

Drama sits where Macedonia meets Thrace and Bulgaria, and the food changes as you walk. In the town it is Macedonian cooking: beans, thick soups, filo pies, grilled meats over charcoal, and the local pork, which the region is known for. The tobacco wealth shows in the old coffeehouses rather than on plates — the aroma of ground coffee is everywhere, and a kafeneio is the natural place to end an afternoon. Moving south towards Thrace the food turns to soutzoukaki and the sharper flavours of the eastern plain, and the watercress and corn from the Drama plain come into their own in pies and pies’ fillings. Look for the vegetable markets early in the morning, which is where the plain’s produce is at its best, and finish with the local sweet pastries and a Greek coffee, not a frappé.

Spring (April to May) and autumn (September to October) are the best months for Drama. Spring is when the Falakro slopes still carry snow and the plain is green, and autumn brings the harvest and the tobacco auctions. Summer (July to August) is peak season — hot, and lively if you want the carnival rather than quiet — while winter is cold and damp in the plain, though the snow on Falakro is genuinely good for skiing nearby at Granitis. If you are here for the carnival, come in the three weeks before Lent, and dress for a very cold evening: the costumes are magnificent and the nights are not warm.

Drama is the terminus of the regional line running north from Thessaloniki through Kilkis and Serres, with services worked by Hellenic Train from Thessaloniki's central station on Monastiriou Street. Rail links east to Xanthi and Alexandroupoli are currently substituted by buses rather than through trains, so the town is best approached from Thessaloniki. The nearest airport is Kavala International Airport "Alexander the Great", about 50 km east; Thessaloniki's airport is the other gateway, some 140 km west.

Start at the Sadirvan mosque and walk the old quarter — the grid is small and everything interesting is within fifteen minutes of it. The Marble House is worth the walk even though it is on the edge of town; it is the clearest single statement of what tobacco did for this city. Drink the water. The fountains are genuinely cold and free, and they are the reason the ancient city had the name it did. For the carnival, book early and go to a rehearsal or a parade rather than only the main night, which is where the atmosphere actually is. Drama is a short hop from Kavala and from Xanthi, so it combines naturally with either.