Set on a hilly, wooded peninsula extending deep into a slate-coloured lake, KASTORIÁ is one of the most interesting and attractive towns of mainland Greece. It's also wealthy by Greek standards and has been so for centuries as the centre of southeast Europe's fur trade; although the local beavers ( kastóri in Greek) of the name had been trapped to extinction by the nineteenth century, Kastoriá still supports a considerable industry of furriers who make up coats, gloves and other items from fur scraps imported from Canada and Scandinavia and, increasingly, from the pelts of locally farmed beavers. Animal-rights activists will find the place heavy going as the industry is well-nigh ubiquitous: you'll see scraps drying on racks, and megastores line all the approach highways, pitched at Russian mafiosi buying mink coats for their womenfolk, to judge from the profuse Cyrillic signposting.

 

For most visitors, however, Kastoriá's main appeal lies in traces of its former prosperity: dozens of splendid arhondiká - mansions of the old fur families - dating from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, plus some fifty Byzantine and medieval churches , though only a handful is visitable and of compelling interest. About the only reminder of Muslim settlement is the minaretless Kursun Tzami marooned in a ridgetop car park; there's also a patch of an originally Byzantine-fortification wall down on the neck of the peninsula.

Kastoriá suffered heavy damage during both World War II and the civil war which followed it. Platía Van Fleet, by the lakeside at the neck of the promontory, commemorates the US general who supervised the Greek Nationalist Army's operations against the Communist Democratic Army in the final campaigns of 1948-49. The town was nearly captured by the Communists in 1948, and Mount Vítsi (2128m), the mountain dominating the northeastern shore of the lake, was, together with Mount Grámmos (2520m) to the west, the scene of their last stand in August 1949. However, most of the destruction of Kastoriá's architectural heritage is not due so much to 1940s munitions as to 1950s neglect, 1960s development and 1970s "renovation". It is miraculous that so many isolated specimens of Balkan vernacular and Neoclassical townhouses survive, mostly higher up on the peninsula where the steep grades have frustrated cement mixers.

The town has a strong tradition of rowing , and rowers can be seen out daily on the lake opposite Odhós Megálou Alexándhrou. Even the Oxford and Cambridge Blues have been known to practise their strokes here. The less energetic might prefer to take one of the regular boat trips on the lake during the spring and summer months; they leave from the jetty near the fish market on the northern side of town (tel 04670/61 758 or 74 289; noon and 6pm; ¬3).