Region of East Macedonia & Thrace
The Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace occupies the northeastern part of Greece. It borders with Turkey easterly, Bulgaria northern and with the Regional Unit of Serres westerly. Southwest is washed by the Aegean Sea and southeast by the Thracian Sea. It includes the Regional Unities: Drama, Kavala, Xanthi, Rodopi and Evros.
It has a total area of 14.157 thousand hectares and covers the 10.7% of the total area of the country.
Also includes two major islands of Thracian Sea, Thassos and Samothrace.
Crossroad of major sea and land routes by which, for thousands of years, are moving people and goods, ideas and habits to and from the four cardinal points: from the Black Sea and Asia to Western Europe and from North Europe and the Balkans to the Mediterranean and North Africa.
The traces of its history, that start from the Paleolithic season and arrive to our days, are everywhere: caves, rock paintings, forts, temples, theaters, citadels, mines, graves, tumuli, marble quarries, Christian monuments, monasteries and holy places , aqueducts, Islamic monuments, traditional villages, Megara, mansions, tobacco warehouses.
The Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, during the ancient times, was covered by forests at the rate of about 80%, but today this percentage has limited to 55% per area. In its extent there are trackless forests, virgin nature, high mountains, rich flora and fauna, large rivers, lakes and lagoons and an endless coastline with clear blue waters and friendly beaches.
The region is a place of music, dance, feast and ritual. Dionysus and Orpheus never left from this earth. The reversals of nature (winter, spring, etc.) give an opportunity for reversals of another class: masquerading and walking over fires, and outspoken sprees, kidnappings and robberies, all in the context of ritual.
First owners of the building were the tobacco tradesmen Athanasios and Pantelis Kougioumtzoglou who used the plans they brought with them from Russia before 1860. Today those plans and designs ...
On the outskirts of Xanthi, preserved in good condition warehouses of tobacco, examples of architecture of industrial buildings and navel of economic prosperity of the city during the late 19th ...
At the top of the hill above the cave of Maara, a fortification was built in the late Roman or Byzantine times. In several places the height reaches from 1 ...
The Holy Church, named as the "Old Church" is dedicated to the Entrance of Holy Mary, honored on November 21. The oral testimonies of the residents report that the post-Byzantine ...
The small church of St. Theodore is modulated inside the cave of Zonaio mountain. The surviving wall painting seems to cover several years, but especially two phases are distinguished, belonging ...
In the central square of Didymoticho, on the base of the hill, where lies the Byzantine Didymoticho, stands the so-called Bayezid mosque, one of the most majestically Ottoman mosques in ...
At a coastline of about 25 kilometers from Alexandroupoli that starts and ends in Ancient Mesimvria spreads a large number of organized beaches. The first beach in this route is ...
It is one of the most beautiful and popular beaches with golden sand and shallow turquoise waters. It is located on the east coast of Thasos, between the villages of ...
The special geological substratum, combined with climatic, soil and topographic conditions, created a significant variety of habitats with special botanical interest. Thus the mountain Falakro collects many, rare for Greece, ...
One of the most visited villages where one can enjoy a hot path in the sanative springs, visit the church of Christ, hike to the Gria Vathra and bathe in ...