Gynaikokastro

Gynaikokastro was built under Andronikos III Palaiologos, who ruled from 1328 to 1341, to strengthen Thessaloniki's northern defences. Its walls crowned a naturally defensible hill above the Macedonian plain. Within the enclosure stood a separately protected citadel, a tower with a chapel and water cisterns. The stronghold could shelter people as well as guard the routes and harvests of the surrounding countryside.

In 1342, after the Zealots took control of Thessaloniki, the city's aristocrats and governor Theodoros Synadinos found refuge here. The fortress later passed into Ottoman hands and its name survived in Turkish as Avret Hisar. That name also came to designate the surrounding administrative district. From the early seventeenth century the site declined as its trade fair moved to the growing town of Kilkis. Yet activity continued at the foot of the hill, where a three-aisled church was built around 1835 using stonework from an older Byzantine church. The hill thus linked late Byzantine warfare with Ottoman administration and changing commercial geography.