Komotini HOTELS

 Lying 48km east of XEnthi along the direct road skirting the RodhEpi foothills, KOMOTINE is larger and markedly more Turkish than XEnthi. On first impression, it's a rather charmless place, with ranks of apartment buildings and gridded suburbs to the south and west, their noisy streets clogged with traffic. It does, however, have a couple of worthwhile museums, a lively bazaar and some of the region's best food. It also has more than a dozen functioning mosques. Social mixing between the different ethnic groups, however - roughly at parity population-wise - is almost nonexistent, although Orthodox and Muslims live in the same neighbourhoods. Recently, the town has become even more polyglot, with an influx of Greek, Armenian and Georgian Christians from the Caucasus, and the authorities have bent over backwards to integrate them.

During the thirteenth century, the city gained importance owing to its position on the Via Egnatia. When the Ottomans took the city in 1361, they changed its name to GEmElA§ine, and it's still known as this to its ethnic Turks. In 1912, at the outbreak of the First Balkan War, KomotinA­ fell to the Bulgarians; it was liberated by Greek forces in the following year, only to be taken once more by the Bulgarians during World War I. It was finally and definitively joined to Greece on May 14, 1920.

The old bazaar , to the north of PlatA­a IrA­nis, is a little bit of Istanbul, lodged between fine mosques and an elegant Ottoman-era clocktower . Alongside shady cafes tiny shops sell everything from dried apricots to iron buckets, and it's especially busy on Tuesdays when the villagers from the surrounding area come into town to sell their wares. Behind this old quarter, you can see the remains of KomotinA­'s Byzantine walls , in one corner of which once stood a fine synagogue, demolished after its dome collapsed in the late 1980s.

Traditionally a city with both Greek and Turkish inhabitants, KomotinA­ began to be dominated by Greek influence in the waning years of the Ottoman empire, when rich Greeks funded schools in the city to develop Greek culture and ideals. Some of these educational foundations still survive: one, a handsome half-timbered building at AyA­ou YeoryA­ou 13, has become the Museum of Folk Life and History (daily except Sun 10am-1pm; free), displaying examples of Thracian embroidery, traditional Thracian dress, silverware, copperware and a collection of religious seals, but avoiding any mention of the ethnic Turkish community. The Archeological Museum at SimeonA­dhi 4 (daily 9am-6pm; free) is also worth a visit, giving a lucid overview of Thracian history, by means of plans and finds from local sites, from its beginnings up to the Byzantine era.