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Ioannina ( ), often called Yannena (Γιάννενα ) within Greece, is the capital and largest city of the Ioannina regional unit and of Epirus, an administrative region in northwestern Greece.
According to the 2021 census, the city population was 64,896 while the municipality had 113,978 inhabitants. It lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level, on the western shore of Lake Pamvotis (Παμβώτις). Ioannina is located northwest of Athens, southwest of Thessaloniki and east of the port of Igoumenitsa on the Ionian Sea.
The city's foundation has traditionally been ascribed to the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century AD, but modern archaeological research has uncovered evidence of Hellenistic settlements. Ioannina flourished in the late Byzantine period (13th–15th centuries). It became part of the Despotate of Epirus following the Fourth Crusade and many wealthy Byzantine families fled there following the 1204 sack of Constantinople, with the city experiencing great prosperity and considerable autonomy, despite the political turmoil. Ioannina surrendered to the Ottoman Empire in 1430 and until 1868 it was the administrative center of the Pashalik of Yanina. In the period between the 18th and 19th centuries, the city was a major center of the modern Greek Enlightenment.Sakellariou M. V. Epirus, 4000 years of Greek history and civilization . Ekdotikē Athēnōn, 1997, p. 268Fleming Katherine Elizabeth. The Muslim Bonaparte: diplomacy and orientalism in Ali Pasha's Greece. Princeton University Press, 1999. . p. 63-66 The Era of Enlightenment (late 7th century – 1821) . Εθνικό Kέντρο Bιβλίου, p. 13Υπουργείο Εσωτερικών, Αποκέντρωσης και Ηλεκρονικής Διακυβέρνησης Περιφέρεια Ηπείρου : "Στη δεκαετία του 1790 ο νεοελληνικός διαφωτισμός έφθασε στο κορύφωμά του. ΦορέαA_1του πνεύματος στα Ιωάννινα είναι ο Αθανάσιος ΨαλίδαA_." Ioannina was ceded to Greece in 1913 following the Balkan Wars.
The city is also characterized by various green areas and parks, including Molos (Lake Front), Litharitsia Park, Pirsinella Park (Giannotiko Saloni), Suburban Forest. There are two hospitals, the General Hospital of Ioannina "G. Hatzikosta", and the University Hospital of Ioannina. It is also the seat of the University of Ioannina. The city's emblem consists of the portrait of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian crowned by a stylized depiction of the nearby ancient theater of Dodona.
According to another theory, the city was named after Ioannina, the daughter of Belisarius, general of the emperor Justinian.
There are two forms of the name in Greek, Ioannina being the formal and historical name, while the colloquial and much more commonly used Υannena or Υannina () represents the vernacular tradition of Demotic Greek. The demotic form also corresponds to those in the neighboring languages (e.g., or Janinë, , , ).
The exact time of Ioannina's foundation is unknown, but it is commonly identified with an unnamed new, "well-fortified" city, recorded by the historian Procopius as having been built by the Byzantine Empire emperor Justinian I for the inhabitants of ancient Euroia. This view is not supported, however, by any concrete archaeological evidence. Early 21st-century excavations have brought to light fortifications dating to the Hellenistic period, the course of which was largely followed by later reconstruction of the fortress in the Byzantine and Ottoman Empire periods. The identification of the site with one of the ancient cities of Epirus has not yet been possible.
It is not until 879 that the name Ioannina appears for the first time, in the acts of the Fourth Council of Constantinople, which refer to one Zacharias, Bishop of Ioannine, a suffragan of Naupaktos. After the Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria, in 1020 Emperor Basil II subordinated the local bishopric to the Archbishopric of Ohrid. The Greek archaeologist K. Tsoures dated the Byzantine city walls and the northeastern citadel of the Ioannina Castle to the 10th century, with additions in the late 11th century, including the south-eastern citadel, traditionally ascribed to the short-lived occupation of the city by the Normans under the leadership of Bohemond of Taranto in 1082. In a chrysobull to the Venetians in 1198, the city is listed as part of its own province ( provincia Joanninorum or Joaninon). In the treaty of partition of the Byzantine lands after the Fourth Crusade, Ioannina was promised to the Venetians, but in the event, it became part of the new state of Epirus, founded by Michael I Komnenos Doukas.
In or , John I Doukas, now ruler of Thessaly, launched a raid against the city and its environs, and a few years later an army from the restored Byzantine Empire unsuccessfully laid siege to the city. Following the assassination in 1318 of the last native ruler, Thomas I Komnenos Doukas, by his nephew Nicholas Orsini, the city refused to accept the latter and turned to the Byzantines for assistance. On this occasion, Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos elevated the city to a metropolitan bishopric, and in 1319 issued a chrysobull conceding wide-ranging autonomy and various privileges and exemptions on its inhabitants. A Jewish community is also attested in the city in 1319. In the Epirote revolt of 1337–1338 against Byzantine rule, the city remained loyal to Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos. Soon afterwards Ioannina fell to the Medieval Serbia ruler Stephen Dushan and remained part of the Serbian Empire until 1356, when Dushan's half-brother Simeon Uroš was evicted by Nikephoros II Orsini.
The attempt of Nikephoros to restore the Epirote state was short-lived as he was killed in the Battle of Achelous against Albanians tribes., but Ioannina was not captured. It thus served as a place of refuge for many Greeks of the region of Vagenetia. In 1366–67 Simeon Uroš, having recovered Epirus and Thessaly, appointed his son-in-law Thomas II Preljubović as the new overlord of Ioannina. Thomas proved a deeply unpopular ruler, but he nonetheless repelled successive attempts by Albanian chieftains including a surprise attack in 1379, whose failure the Ioannites attributed to intervention by their patron saint, Michael.
After Thomas' murder in 1384, the citizens of Ioannina offered their city to Esau de' Buondelmonti, who married Thomas' widow, Maria. Esau recalled those exiled under Thomas and restored the properties confiscated by him. In 1389, Ioannina was besieged by Gjin Bua Shpata, and only with the aid of an Ottoman army was Esau able to repel the Albanians. Despite the ongoing Ottoman expansion and the conflicts between Turks and Albanians in the vicinity of Ioannina, Esau managed to secure a period of peace for the city, especially following his second marriage to Shpata's daughter Irene in . Following Esau's death in 1411, the Ioannites invited the Count palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos, Carlo I Tocco, who had already been expanding his domains into Epirus for the last decade, as their new ruler. By 1416 Carlo I Tocco had managed to capture Arta as well, thereby reuniting the core of the old Epirote realm, and received recognition from both the Ottomans and the Byzantine emperor. Ioannina became the summer capital of the Tocco domains, and Carlo I died there in July 1429. Carlo I's army, as well as the army of the city of Ioannina itself both before and during Carlo I's rule, was composed primarily of Albanians. His oldest bastard son, Ercole, called on the Ottomans for aid against the legitimate heir, Carlo II Tocco. In 1430 an Ottoman army, fresh from the capture of Thessalonica, appeared before Ioannina. The city surrendered after the Ottoman commander, Sinan Pasha, promised to spare the city and respect its autonomy.
In 1611 the city suffered a serious setback as a result of a peasant revolt led by Dionysius the Philosopher, the Metropolitan of Larissa. The Greek inhabitants of the city were unaware of the intent of the fighting as previous successes of Dionysius had depended on the element of surprise. Much confusion ensued as Turks and Christians ended up indiscriminately fighting friend and foe alike. The revolt ended in the abolition of all privileges granted to the Christian inhabitants, who were driven away from the castle area and had to settle around it. From then onwards, Turks and Jews were to be established in the castle area. The School of the Despots at the Church of the Taxiarchs, that had been operating since 1204, was closed.
Aslan Pasha also destroyed the monastery of St John the Baptist within the city walls in 1618 erected in its place the Aslan Pasha Mosque, today housing the Municipal Ethnographic Museum of Ioannina.Γεώργιος Ι. Σουλιώτης Γιάννινα (Οδηγός Δημοτικού Μουσείου και Πόλεως 1975 The Ottoman reprisals in the wake of the revolt included the confiscation of many previously granted to Christian ; this began a wave of conversions to Islam by the local gentry, who became the so-called Tourkoyanniotes (Τoυρκογιαννιώτες). The Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi, who visited the city in , counted 37 quarters, of which 18 Muslim, 14 Christian, four Jewish and one Gypsy. He estimated the population at 4,000 hearths.
The city also soon recovered from the financial effects of the revolt. In the late 17th century Ioannina was a thriving city with respect to population and commercial activity. Evliya Çelebi mentions the presence of 1,900 shops and workshops. The great economic prosperity of the city was followed by remarkable cultural activity. During the 17th and 18th centuries, many important schools were established.Π. Αραβαντινού, Βιογραφική Συλλογή Λογίων της Τουρκοκρατίας, Εκδόσεις Ε.Η.Μ., 1960. Its inhabitants continued their commercial and handicraft activities which allowed them to trade with important European commercial centers, such as Venice and Livorno, where merchants from Ioannina established commercial and banking houses. The Ioannite diaspora was also culturally active: Nikolaos Glykys (in 1670), Nikolaos Sarros (in 1687) and Dimitrios Theodosiou (in 1755) established private printing presses in Venice, responsible for over 1,600 editions of books for circulation in the Ottoman-ruled Greek lands, and Ioannina was the centre through which these books were channeled into Greece. These were significant historical, theological as well as scientific works, including an algebra book funded by the Zosimades brothers, books for use in the schools of Ioannina such as the Arithmetica of Balanos Vasilopoulos, as well as medical books. At the same time these merchants and entrepreneurs maintained close economic and intellectual relations with their birthplace and founded charity and education establishments. These merchants were to be major national benefactors.
Thus the Epiphaniou School was founded in 1647 by a Greek merchant of Ioannite origin resident in Venice, Epiphaneios Igoumenos. The Gioumeios School was founded in 1676 by a benefaction from another wealthy Ioannite Greek from Venice, Emmanuel Goumas. It was renamed Balaneios by its rector, Balanos Vasilopoulos, in 1725. Here worked several notable personalities of the Greek Enlightenment, such as Bessarion Makris, the priests Georgios Sougdouris (1685/7–1725) and Anastasios Papavasileiou (1715–?), the monk Methodios Anthrakites, his student Ioannis Vilaras and Kosmas Balanos. The Balaneios taught philosophy, theology and mathematics. It suffered financially from the dissolution of the Republic of Venice by the French and finally stopped operation in 1820. The school's library, which hosted several manuscripts and epigrams, was also burned the same year following the capture of Ioannina by the troops the Sultan had sent against Ali Pasha.
The Maroutses family, also active in Venice, founded the Maroutsaia School, which opened in 1742 and its first director Eugenios Voulgaris championed the study of the physical sciences (physics and chemistry) as well as philosophy and Greek. The Maroutsaia also suffered after the fall of Venice and closed in 1797 to be reopened as the Kaplaneios School thanks to a benefaction from an Ioannite living in Russia, Zoes Kaplanes. Its schoolmaster, Athanasios Psalidas had been a student of Methodios Anthrakites and had also studied in Vienna and in Russia. Psalidas established an important library of thousands of volumes in several languages and laboratories for the study of experimental physics and chemistry that aroused the interest and suspicion of Ali Pasha. The Kaplaneios was burned down along with most of the rest of the city after the entry of the Mahmud II's armies in 1820. These schools took over the long tradition of the Byzantine Empire era, giving a significant boost to the Greek Enlightenment. "During the 18th century", Neophytos Doukas wrote with some exaggeration, "every author of the Greek world, was either from Ioannina or was a graduate of one of the city's schools."S. Mpettis, Enlightenment. Contribution and study of the Epirote enlightment. Epirotiki Estia, 1967, pg. 497–499.
When the French scholar François Pouqueville visited the city during the early years of the 19th century, he counted 3,200 homes (2,000 Christian, 1,000 Muslim, 200 Jewish). The efforts of Ali Pasha to break away from the Sublime Porte alarmed the Ottoman government, and in 1820 (the year before the Greek War of Independence began) he was declared guilty of treason and Ioannina was besieged by Turkish troops. Ali Pasha was assassinated in 1822 in the monastery of St Panteleimon on the island of the lake, where he took refuge while waiting to be pardoned by Sultan Mahmud II.
In 1869, a great part of Ioannina was destroyed by fire. The marketplace was soon reconstructed according to the plans of the German architect Holz, thanks to the personal interest of Ahmet Rashim Pasha, the local governor. Communities of people from Ioannina living abroad were active in financing the construction of most of the city's churches, schools and other elegant buildings of charitable establishments. The first bank of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Bank, opened its first branch in Greece in Ioannina, which shows the power of the city in world trade in the 19th century. As the 19th century came to a close, signs of national agitation emerged among some parts of the city' s population. In 1877 for example, Albanian leaders sent a memorandum to the Ottoman government demanding, among other things, the establishment of Albanian language schools and various Muslim Albanians of the Vilayet formed in Ioannina a committee which aimed at defending Albanian rights, but it was inactive in general. The Greek population of the region authorized a committee to present to European governments their wish for union with Greece; as a result Dimitrios Chasiotis published a memorandum in Paris in 1879.
According to the Ottoman censuses of 1881–1893, the city and its environs (the central kaza of the Sanjak of Ioannina), had a population comprising 4,759 Muslims, 77,258 Greek Orthodox (including both Greek and Albanian speakers), 3,334 Jews and 207 of foreign nationality. While a number of Turkish-language schools were established at the time, Greek-language education retained its prominent position. Even the city's prominent Muslim families preferred to send their children to well-established Greek institutions, notably the Zosimaia. As a result, the dominance of the Greek language in the city continued: the minutes of the city council were kept in Greek, and the official newspaper, Vilayet, established in 1868, was bilingual in Turkish and Greek.
By 1908 an Albanian association was already active in Ioannina with the goal of removing the Albanian schools and churches of Ioaninna from the Greek's Patriarchate sphere of influence.
During the Ottoman period ( turcokracy) the religious-linguistic minority of "Turco-yanniotes" (Τουρκογιαννιώτες) existed in Ioannina and neighbouring areas. These were islamized "Yaniotes" (= people from Ioannina), who spoke Greek. There is a limited number of texts written with Greek alphabet in their idiom.
Following the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922) and the Treaty of Lausanne, the Muslim population was exchanged with Greek refugees from Asia Minor. A small Muslim community of Albanian origin continued to live in Ioannina after the exchange, which in 1940 counted 20 families and had decreased to 8 individuals in 1973. p. 56. "The population exchange between Greece and Turkey which followed removed all those of Turkish origin so that, by 1940, only some twenty Muslim families of Albanian origin were left. In 1973, only eight Muslim remained, living together in an ancient house in the centre of Ioannina. The local authorities, we are told, had refused to allow them to use one of the remaining mosques for worship, their estates remain sequestered and a long battle for what they regard as their rights has so far come to nothing. Although Albanian, they could hope for no sympathy from the present regime in Albania and there was nowhere else for them to go."
In 1940 during World War II the capture of the city became one of the major objectives of the Italian Army. Nevertheless, the Greek defense in Kalpaki pushed back the invading Italians. In April 1941 Ioannina was intensively bombed by the German forces even during the negotiations that led to the capitulation of the Greek army. During the subsequent Axis occupation of Greece, the city's Jewish community was rounded up by the Germans in 1944 and mostly perished in the concentration camps. On 3 October 1943, the German army murdered in reprisal nearly 100 people in the village of Lingiades, 13 kilometres distant from Ioaninna, in what is known as the Lingiades massacre.
The University of Ioannina was founded in 1970; until then, higher education faculties in the city had been part of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
An informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the states of the European Union took place in Ioannina on 27 March 1994, resulting in the Ioannina compromise.
There was a Romaniotes Jewish community living in Ioannina before World War II, in addition to a very small number of Sephardi. Many emigrated to New York, founding a congregation in 1906 and the Kehila Kedosha Janina synagogue in 1927.
According to Rae Dalven, 1,950 Jews were living in Ioannina in April 1941. Of these, 1,870 were deported by the Nazis to concentration camps on 25 March 1944, during the final months of German occupation. Almost all of the people deported were murdered on or shortly after 11 April 1944, when the train carrying them reached Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 181 Ioannina Jews are known to have survived the war, including 112 who survived Auschwitz and 69 who fled to join the resistance leader Napoleon Zervas and the National Republican Greek League (EDES). Approximately 164 of these survivors eventually returned to Ioannina.Rae Dalven, The Jews of Ioannina, Cadmus Press, Philadelphia, 1990; p. 47.
As of 2008, the remaining community has shrunk to about 50 mostly elderly people. "The Holocaust in Ioannina", Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum retrieved 5 January 2009 Raptis, Alekos and Tzallas, Thumios, Deportation of Jews of Ioannina, Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum, 28 July 2005 URL accessed 5 January 2009 The Kehila Kedosha Yashan Synagogue remains locked, only opened for visitors on request. Emigrant Romaniotes return every summer and open the old synagogue. The last time a Bar Mitzvah (the Jewish ritual for celebrating the coming of age of a child) was held in the synagogue was in 2000, and was an exceptional event for the community. A monument dedicated to the thousands of Greek Jews who perished during the Holocaust was constructed in the city in a 13th-century Jewish cemetery. In 2003 the memorial was vandalized by unknown anti-Semites. The Jewish cemetery too was repeatedly vandalized in 2009. As a response to the vandalisms, citizens of the city formed an initiative for the protection of the cemetery and organized rallies.
In the municipal election of 2019, independent candidate Moses Elisaf, a 65-year-old doctor, was elected mayor of the city, the first Jews elected mayor in Greece. Elisaf won 50.3 percent of the vote. Elisaf received 17,789 votes, 235 more than his runoff opponent.
The municipality Ioannina has an area of 403.322 km2, the municipal unit Ioannina has an area of 47.440 km2, and the community Ioannina (the city proper) has an area of 17.335 km2.
| + Population censuses, 1981–2021 | |||||
| 1913 | 16,804 | – | – | ||
| 1920 | 20,765 | – | – | ||
| 1928 | 20,485 | – | – | ||
| 1940 | 21,887 | – | – | ||
| 1951 | 32,315 | – | – | ||
| 1961 | 34,997 | – | – | ||
| 1971 | 40,130 | – | – | ||
| – | |||||
| – | |||||
| 75,550 | |||||
| 112,486 | 53,975 | 58,511 | |||
| 113,978 | 54,951 | 59,027 |
As of 2017, there was a student population of 25,000 enrolled at the university (21,900 at the undergraduate level and 3,200 at the postgraduate level) and 580 faculty members, while teaching is further supplemented by 171 teaching fellows and 132 laboratory staff. The university administrative services are staffed with 420 employees.
Additionally, the prefecture has been actively fostering partnerships between Greek and German companies in a bid to further strengthen the local economy and tech ecosystem. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with the Greek-German Chamber, outlining the recovery plan for the region, a move that has been seen as a significant step in boosting technological development in Ioannina.
| +Sport clubs based in Ioannina | |||
| NO Ioanninon | 1954 | Rowing | Long-time champions in Greece |
| Spartakos AO | 1984 | Olympic weightlifting, Judo, Track and field, Basketball | Long-time champions in Greece in weightlifting |
| Long-time presence in A Ethniki | |||
| Earlier presence in A1 Ethniki volleyball | |||
| Earlier presence in Gamma Ethniki | |||
| Presence in A2 Ethniki volleyball | |||
| Presence in B Ethniki | |||
| Presence in B Ethniki |
| +Sport complex based in Ioannina |
| PAS Giannina |
| PAS Giannina, AO Velissarios FCAE Giannena |
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