Kastoriá

Set on a hilly, wooded peninsula extending deep into slate-coloured Lake Orestiádha, KASTORIÁ is one of the most interesting and attractive towns of mainland Greece. For centuries it grew rich on the fur trade, using the pelts of local wild beavers (kastóri in Greek). Though these animals were trapped to extinction by the nineteenth century, Kastoriá still supports a considerable industry of furriers using a mixture of imported pelts and locally farmed beavers. You’ll see pelts drying on racks, and fur megastores with profuse Russian signposting hinting at the target market. The town also has a strong tradition of rowing, and rowers can be seen out on the lake most days. Even the Oxford and Cambridge Blues have been known to practise their strokes here.

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. About the only reminder of Muslim settlement is the minaret-less Koursoún Tzamí, marooned in a ridgetop car park; there’s also a patch of an originally Byzantine fortification wall down on the neck of the peninsula.

Karýdhis

For a sense of what Kastoriá must once have been during its heyday, head for the former lakeside quarter officially called Karýdhis but better known as Dóltso. Among the notable mansions in the area are Bassáras and Natzís, close together on Vyzandíon; the latter was admirably restored in the 1990s. A third, also close by, on Platía Dóltso, now houses the Traditional Costume Museum (open by appointment; free;24670 22697), a magical display of traditional clothing from western Macedonia and a chance to see another magnificent interior.

Folklore museum

The splendidly opulent seventeenth-century Aïvazís family mansion has been turned into a Folklore Museum. The house was inhabited until 1972 and its furnishings and most of its ceilings are in excellent repair, having miraculously survived German shelling; the Ottoman-style kiosk sports a set of stained-glass windows, three of them original, the others replaced by a local craftsman. Other features are an oriental fireplace in the master bedroom and the kitchen with all the original pots and pans.

Byzantine Museum

The Byzantine Museum, up on Platía Dhexamenís, wisely goes for quality over quantity in this well-lit if unimaginatively displayed collection spanning the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Highlights include an unusually expressive thirteenth-century icon of Áyios Nikólaos and a fourteenth-century Ayii Anaryiri, plus a later one depicting the life of St George. There are also a few double-sided icons, including a rare Deposition, intended for use in religious processions. Captions are in Greek only.

Lake Orestiádha

One of the most pleasant things to do in Kastoriá is to follow the narrow road along Lake Orestiádha to the peninsula to the east of town; at the tip vehicles must circulate anticlockwise, but the route is mainly used by joggers and the odd walker. Although the lake itself is visibly polluted, wildlife still abounds – pelicans, swans, frogs, tortoises and water snakes especially, and on a spring day numerous fish break water.

Mavriótissa monastery

Near the southeastern tip of the peninsula, some 3km along from the Hotel Kastoria, stands the Mavriótissa monastery, flanked by peacocks and a fair-value restaurant. Two churches are all that remains of the monastery: a smaller fourteenth-century chapel, with fine frescoes of scenes from Christ’s life, abutting the larger, wood-roofed eleventh-century katholikón on whose outer wall looms a well-preserved Tree of Jesse, showing the genealogy of the Saviour.

The Dragon’s Cave (Spiliá tou Dhrákou)

Given its name because the entrance resembles the mouth of a dragon and an old legend claimed there was a resident one that spouted fire if anyone approached, the Dragon’s Cave was discovered in 1940 but only opened to the public in 2010. The interior is festooned with an impressive array of stalgmites and stalactites and there are some patches of lake within, around which walkways have been carefully constructed.

Dhispílio prehistoric lake settlement

On the southern shore of the lake lie the remains of a fascinating prehistoric lake settlement, which is thought to date from around 5500–5000 BC during the Neolithic Period. First excavated in 1992, finds include a range of household goods and a wooden tablet, inscribed with an early linear script. A modern re-creation of the original huts and an eco-museum help bring to life what the area must have looked like in these distant times.