Kastoria
Kastoria is a city in Greece and the capital of the prefecture of the same name. It is located at the western end of Western Macedonia. The population of the city amounts to 13,387 inhabitants (2011). It is built on a peninsula of the homonymous lake, at an altitude of 703 m[1] from the surface of the sea, between the mountains Vici and Grammos. It is surrounded by its lake and connected to the mainland by a wider strip of embankment land, giving the impression of an island.
In its long history, one and a half millennia since it was built and two millennia since it was inhabited, it has seen sieges and conquests by Bulgarians, Normans and Turks, but still maintains a significant number of Byzantine churches, relics and mansions as evidence of its occasional prosperity, due to the successful trading and distribution of furs in important centers of Europe.
In a neighboring area, according to the Byzantine historian Procopius in his work About buildings which he wrote (553-555), the Thessalian city Diocletianoupolis was located. Diocletianoupolis has been identified by archaeologists with an ancient city in the area of Armenochori that was recently discovered 4 kilometers south of Kastoria. Two and a half centuries after its foundation, according to the same historian, the city was moved by the emperor Justinian (527-565) to a fortified position on the lake, which lake he named, for the first time, Kastoria. Regarding the name of the city, he states that Justinian: "...and the name, as an ekos, left the city".
As for the name of the city, the prevailing opinion is that it came from the beavers which were endemic to it for centuries. In the 18th century it seems that there were still beavers in the lake of Kastoria, as the document no. 1314 of the State Archives of Venice states that the Kastorians send "few beaver furs». It is assumed that overgrazing, but mainly due to the changes over the centuries in the climatic conditions and above all the gradual reduction of the rushing waters from Vici, caused the disappearance of the beaver from the lake.
The Byzantine historian Anna Komneni mentions that the lake is called that of Kastoria, while the name of the city comes from the word castle of the Latin wordcastrum). The opinion that the name Kastoria comes from the word castle it is considered less likely, however, you are often called this way in the post-Byzantine era, as in the codes of the Metropolis of Kastoria, while the inhabitants of the city were also accompanied by the surname "kastriotis". The Turkish name of the city is Gölikesrili (Castle of the lake), while the Serbian, Bulgarian script of the city is Kostur (Cyrillic: Костур). According to one view (Поповски, Търпо -1869-1913), the Slavic name "Костур – Костур" comes from the Bulgarian word "кост - кост"c which means bone or the Greek word skeleton (in Bulgarian, the word "костур" refers to a kind of fish with many bones).
The name of the city is still associated with Kastor, as in local mythology it is mentioned that it was built in 840 BC. by Castor, brother of Polydeuces, after an oracle he received from the Oracle of Delphi.