Kastoriá

Kastoria stands on a peninsula jutting into Lake Orestiada, beneath the mountains of western Macedonia. Its many Byzantine churches bear witness to the long history of a town whose fortunes came to rest on a distinctive craft: the working of fur. Kastorian craftsmen made garments from small pieces of pelts, and their merchants carried the finished goods far beyond the lake.

By the seventeenth century, the fur trade had brought prosperity and connections with Constantinople and cities farther north. Merchants who made their fortunes abroad endowed churches and schools in their home town, while substantial houses rose along its narrow streets. The decorated mansions that survive from the later Ottoman period recall the wealth and tastes of Kastoria's trading families.