Tríkala

Trikala stands in western Thessaly beneath a castle built on the acropolis of ancient Trikke. Greek tradition associated the old city with Asclepius, the god of healing, and its sanctuary was counted among the oldest dedicated to him. The Lithaios River flows through the town, between the Thessalian plain and the mountains of the Pindus.

In the fourteenth century, the Serbian ruler Symeon Uroš made Trikala his court. The Ottomans conquered Thessaly in the 1390s, and the city became the centre of a sanjak. In the sixteenth century the architect Sinan designed the domed mosque of Osman Shah. When Evliya Çelebi visited in the following century, he described Muslim and Christian quarters, mosques, baths, lodges and a busy town of craftsmen and merchants.