Hátera

On the Pierian plain between Mount Olympus and the Thermaic Gulf, the name Hatera appears in old accounts of a settlement near the later town of Katerini. Under Ottoman rule Katerini was a modest community, but it also served as the seat of a judge: a decree of 1686 addressed its official alongside those of neighboring towns. In 1806 the traveler William Leake counted about a hundred houses, while the surrounding plain supported cultivation of wheat.