Old Town of Xanthi

The Old Town of Xanthi is located in the north of Xanthi constituting its historic core and covers an area of 380.000m2. The city is built after 1829. The year that large earthquakes fully deplete the previous settlement. The city is built on the ruins and with core the churches, which were probably from the era of Byzantine Xanthia, as it was called from ancient time the city of Xanthi. During the 19th century, Xanthi referred to as a town of 8,000 inhabitants, but was economically flourishing and this is due to the richness of the cultivation, processing, manufacturing and distribution of tobacco and its products, but also for privileged position to major trading roads. The city is built from Epirus and Macedonian craftsmen, characterized by labyrinthine form of cobbled streets and is full of Balkan houses, inns, shops, typical churches of the last Ottoman period but at the same time a western neoclassical mansions whose owners were mainly merchants tobacco .