Lárissa

Larissa stands on the Pineios in the fertile plain of Thessaly, a country famous in antiquity for its horses. The ancient city placed a horse on its coins and became a leading centre of the Thessalian League. Its long history is visible in the remains of Greek and Roman buildings, while Mount Olympus rises beyond the plain to the northeast.

After several earlier conquests, Turahan Bey established lasting Ottoman control in 1423. Called Yenişehir, Larissa became a major military and administrative centre of Ottoman Thessaly, with mosques, schools, baths and covered markets. Its trade fair was well known in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Orthodox metropolitan, long resident at Trikala, returned to Larissa in 1734, and the pasha's seat followed in 1770. During the Greek War of Independence, Hursid Pasha used the city as his headquarters.