Florina

Florina has a reputation that outlasts the evidence for it, and it is worth taking seriously anyway. At nearly seven hundred metres, hemmed in by the Vitsi, the Varnountas and the Baba, with the air arriving damp from the north, it gets more snow than anywhere else in Greece and holds it longest. In January it is not unusual for the town to be white while the plain forty kilometres down towards Greece is green.

The town itself is a piece of deliberate Ottoman urban planning. It grew in the sixteenth century as the seat of a sanjak, and it was laid out with the regularity of a military colony rather than the organic tangle of most Macedonian towns — which is why the streets of the centre are straight and the river runs down the middle of them. That river is the Sakoulevas, and the locals call its banks the beach. It is usually a trickle, and in August almost nothing.

What is genuinely beautiful about Florina is the architecture: the tall neoclassical mansions along the river, built in the last century of the Ottoman period by merchants trading in fur and grain, with the overhanging wooden upper floors that give these towns their character. The Archaeological Museum is unusually good for a town this size, and the cinema where Theo Angelopoulos made seven films is on the main square.

The site of ancient Florina was on the hill of Agios Panteleimon, above the modern town, and was occupied from at least the second millennium BC. It was destroyed by fire in the early first century BC, after which the hill was abandoned until Byzantine times. The Byzantine city that replaced it was Chlerinos, a fortified town whose castle is still the dominant feature of the hill.

Under the Ottomans Florina became a sanjak seat and, later, the seat of a kaza in the sanjak of Monastir. It had a mixed population of Christians and Muslims, with Muslims the majority in the seventeenth century; an Ottoman hammam and a minaret base survive, almost the only Ottoman structures left in the city, since the rest of the old quarter was replaced. Of the more than eight thousand Jews who lived in Florina before the Second World War, none survived the deportations from Salonika.

The railway reached Florina in 1893, and the town grew with it. Pavlos Melas was based here from 1904 during the Macedonian Struggle, and the city was liberated on 7 November 1912 after 527 years of Ottoman rule. In 1916–17 it was the headquarters of the Allied armies on the Salonika front, and it was here that the Bulgarian offensive was finally broken in 1918.

Florina is inland, with the nearest sea more than 150 kilometres away, but the region has water of its own and it is worth driving into the mountains for it. The Sakoulevas runs through the town, the Vegoritida lake lies north of it, and Prespa is west.

Lake Prespa is shared between Greece, Albania and North Macedonia, and the Greek side has the monastery of Agios Achillios on its own island, with the lake's reed beds, waterbirds and the surrounding mountains. It is the single best day trip from Florina.

Up on the Vitsi, Nymphaio is a Vlach mountain village built entirely of stone with slate roofs, restored to a standard that makes it one of the most photographed villages in the north — and it is well known for its wine and its food. The Baba mountain and the ski centre above Florina make winter a real season here, unlike most of the region. The mountains also produce the mushrooms and the wild herbs that the local cooking is built on.

Florina is a Macedonian border town and its cooking reflects that — the peppers of Florina carry a protected designation and are the base of the local cooking, appearing grilled, in stews and pickled. Florina is also known for its cheeses and for the smoked and cured meats of the north. The mountains bring mushrooms in autumn and game in winter. The best eating is in the tavernas around the centre rather than on the main road, and the local tsipouro is everywhere.

June to September is the main season, and September is the best of it — warm enough to eat outside, with the peppers and the grapes in, and the summer crowds gone. May and October are good for walking. Winter is the reason Florina is unusual: it snows heavily and regularly, the town is quiet, and the ski centre on the Baba is in use. Spring brings wild flowers on the mountain and the waterfalls at full volume.

Florina has a station on the Thessaloniki–Florina railway line, which is the easiest way in without a car. Buses also run from Thessaloniki and from Bitola across the border.

For Prespa and Nymphaio you need a car — Prespa especially. Winter driving needs snow chains, which rental cars in the region will supply. The Archaeological Museum closes early and on Mondays, so plan around it. Eat the peppers, and try the local cheese.