Larissa
— — a city older than the names it answers to.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Thessaly, on the Pineios River as it leaves the mountains for the plain. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe — Neolithic settlement layers, a Hellenistic theatre cut into the Frourio hill, an Ottoman mosque, and a tradition that Hippocrates died here in the fourth century BC. The plain stretches flat to the north until Olympus stops it.
Larissa, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Larissa is the capital of the Thessaly region in central Greece, set on the south bank of the Pineios River where it leaves the Pindus foothills for the great Thessalian plain. The city sits at about sixty-seven metres above sea level, with Mount Olympus rising to roughly 2,917 metres on the northern horizon. Larissa is one of Europe's oldest continuously inhabited sites, with Neolithic occupation layers under the modern centre. It is today the fourth-largest city in Greece and the agricultural heart of the Thessalian plain.
Two layers of stone define the old city. The First Ancient Theatre, cut into the Frourio hill in the late third century BC under the Macedonian king Antigonus II Gonatas, seated about ten thousand spectators across twenty-five rows of marble seats; excavation began in 1968 and continues. Above it, the Bayrakli Mosque survives from the long Ottoman period, when Larissa was the regional Ottoman capital. Tradition holds that Hippocrates of Kos died in Larissa around 370 BC; a memorial marks the spot.
Larissa is reached in about four hours by road or train from Athens, and roughly an hour and a half from Thessaloniki, on the main rail and motorway spine of the Greek mainland. The ancient theatre and the Frourio archaeological park are open daily and free to enter. Summers on the Thessalian plain are hot and dry, often above thirty-five degrees Celsius in July and August; spring and autumn are kinder. Olympus and the Vale of Tempe lie a short drive to the north.