Ioannina constitutes a world intertwined with its legends and the elements of nature. A city in which the lake plays a leading role, acting as a scenic artist, but also a narrator. Simultaneously, it is a city which, like the mountains surrounding it, is firmly set on the ground and, at the same time, immersed in the charm of its age-old history. Heroes, religions, myths and memories, all of which are possessions and spoils of this unique Siren, who for thousands of years now has been enticing us into listening to the song of this land.

This book attempts to set out on a journey through space and time. With intermediate “stops” at the ages before and after the invention of script, the Byzantine and post-Byzantine times, the city’s conquest by the Ottomans, the reign of Ali Pasha and the Reform period to his demise and the Liberation. With “stops” at the caves of Perama and Kastritsa, Dodona —the Oracle of earth and sky, with the “high-crested” oak tree and the will of Zeus—, the Nissi (Island) —with the significant monastic state and the figures of the ancient Greek philosophers depicted on its wall paintings—, the Castle, the city of the past and the present.

Man has always been at the centre of this swirl of events through space and time. It seems that his anxieties, as these were expressed in Dodona’s oracular tablets when he desperately sought prophecies, or when he silently visited a church, a mosque or a synagogue to pray, have barely changed. To him, time is no different than Plato’s perception of it: a moving image of eternity.