Kastoria Regional Unit

Geography

Kastoria is situated at the western end of Macedonia in the far north of the country. It borders the regional units of Florina to the north, Kozani to the southeast, Grevena to the south and Ioannina to the southwest. The area of the regional unit roughly corresponds to the ancient Greek region of Orestis of Upper Macedonia. The international border with the Albanian district of Korçë lies on the western edge of the regional unit.

The main mountain ranges are Gramos and Voio in the west (both part of the Pindus range) and Verno in the northeast. The Haliacmon river flows through the area. Lake Orestiada is the largest lake. The regional unit is mountainous with a pronounced continental climate, characterised by cold winters and hot summers.

Administration

The regional unit Kastoria is subdivided into 3 municipalities. These are (number as in the map in the infobox):

Kastoria (1)

Nestorio (2)

Argos Orestiko (3)

Prefecture

Kastoria was created as a prefecture (Greek: Νομός Καστοριάς) in 1941. As a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, the regional unit Kastoria was created out of the former prefecture Kastoria. The prefecture had the same territory as the present regional unit. At the same time, the municipalities were reorganised, according to the table below.

Demographics

The Kastoria region was part of the Ottoman Empire for several centuries and following the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) became part of Greece. There were religious communities such as Christians, Muslims and Jews and groups of Turcophones, Greeks, Aromanians and Slavophones. The rural areas of Kastoria province were multi–ethnic, as the north was largely, though not entirely populated by Slavic speakers, while the south mainly had Grecophones. The demographics of the Kastoria region were affected by the population exchanges Greece had with Bulgaria (voluntary, 1919) and Turkey (compulsory, 1923). Numbers of Slavic speakers decreased. After 1913, a few Christian families from the new state of Albania settled in several villages within Kastoria district.

The official and unpublished Greek census (1923) recorded 68,245 people in Kastoria district, with 29,598 Slav Macedonian Christians and 22,768 Greeks who also included Aromanian speakers and Albanian speakers. Muslims numbered either 13,767 people (or 2425 families) or 14,448 inhabitants and 1,794 Jews. Historian John Koliopoulos described the 1923 census as "the least unreliable" for its numbers of language groups in the area. A quarter of all inhabitants in the Kastoria region were Muslims and they, including Muslim Albanophones were sent to Turkey as part of the Greek–Turkish population exchange based on religious criteria. A small number of Muslim Albanians were excluded from the population exchange and remained in the Kastoria region.

In 1924, Greek authorities compiled data of the ethnological composition of Greek Macedonia. Kastoria district had a total of 68,340 inhabitants composed of 22,768 Greeks; 14,448 Muslims; 7,519 Slavophone former Patriarchists; 22,079 Slavophone former Exarchists; 220 Aromanian speakers (pro–Romanian); 1,211 Jews and 95 refugees. Political categories from a nationalist perspective were used to describe ethnic groups or religious affiliations in the 1924 data by Greek authorities.

Greek refugees arrived in the Kastoria area, while their settlement was limited by the lack of fertile land and the need for stable bilateral relations with Yugoslavia which also prevented mass Slavophone emigration. In Greek Macedonia, Kastoria province remained an area in the interwar period where Slavophones were a large part of the population. A 1925 study by the Greek 10th Army Division of Western Macedonia recorded 1,866 refugee families were settled in 28 villages within the Kastoria region. Greek refugee families in Kastoria prefecture were from East Thrace (41), Asia Minor (441), Pontus (1,417), the Caucasus (23) and unidentified locations (9) in 1926. In 1928, there were 1,928 refugee families (7,554 people). In the Kastoria region, the number of refugees reached 8,370.

Transport

The main roads that pass through the regional unit are the A29 motorway and EO15 road. The EO20 briefly passes through the unit to the south, through Eptachori.