Backing onto the easterly foothills of Mount Symvolo,
KAVÁLA is the second-largest city of Macedonia and the second port for northern Greece. Although its attempt to style itself as the Azure City, on account of its position at the head of a wide bay, is going a little overboard, it does have a characterful centre, focused on the nineteenth-century harbour and old tobacco warehouses. A picturesque citadel looks down from a rocky promontory to the east, and an elegant Turkish aqueduct leaps over modern buildings into the old quarter on the bluff.
Known in ancient times as Neapolis, the town was for two centuries or more a staging post on the Via Egnatía and the first European port of call for merchants and travellers from the Middle East. It was here that Saint Paul landed en route to Philippi, on his initial mission to Europe. In later years, the port and citadel were occupied in turn by the Byzantines, Normans, Franks, Venetians, Ottomans and (during both world wars) Bulgarians. Kavála is also one of the main departure points for Thássos and, to a lesser extent, Samothráki
The town
Although the remnants of Kavála's Turkish past are mostly neglected, the wedge-shaped
Panayía quarter to the east of the port preserves a scattering of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings with atmospheric lanes wandering up towards the citadel. The most conspicuous and interesting of its buildings is the
Imaret , overlooking the harbour on Poulídhou. An elongated, yellowish multidomed structure with plaques inscribed with Arabic script over many doorways, it was originally a combination soup kitchen-cum-hostel, housing three hundred
softas , or theological students. After many decades of dereliction it was partly refurbished during the early 1990s appropriately enough as a bar-restaurant. Claimed to be the largest Islamic public building in Europe, it was endowed by
Mehmet (or Mohammed) Ali , pasha of Egypt and founder of the dynasty which ended with King Farouk. The splendid
house where Mehmet Ali was born to an Albanian family in 1769, near the corner of Pavlídhou and Mohámet Alí, is maintained as a monument. It provides an opportunity to look over a prestigious Islamic house, with its wood-panelled reception rooms, ground-floor stables and first-floor harem (daily except Mon 10am-2pm; officially free but easiest in a group; tip the non-English-speaking guide). Nearby rears an equestrian bronze statue of the great man, one of the finest of its kind in Greece.
Wonderful views can be had from the Byzantine citadel (daily 10am-7pm, sometimes closed for siesta; free), signed "castle". You can explore the ramparts, towers, dungeon and cistern, and in season it co-hosts the Philippi-Thássos Festival of drama and music in its main court. From here, down towards the middle of town, the aqueduct , built on a Roman model during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520-66), spans the traffic in Platía Nikotsára.
Finally, on the other side of the harbour from the old town, there are two museums of moderate interest. The Archeological Museum (Tues-Sun 8.30am-3pm; ¬1.50) on Erythroú Stavroú contains a fine dolphin and lily mosaic upstairs in the Abdera room, plus painted sarcophagi in the adjacent section devoted to Thasian colonies. Downstairs in the ground-floor rear left gallery is a reconstructed Macedonian funeral chamber, with many terracotta figurines still decorated in their original paint and gold ornaments from tombs at Amphipolis. Just inland, wedged between former tobacco warehouses at Filíppou 4, is the Folk and Modern Art Museum (Mon-Fri 8am-2pm, Sat 9am-1pm; free). Along with various collections of traditional costumes and household utensils, this has some interesting rooms devoted to the Thássos-born sculptor Polygnotos Vayis.
