Avlida

• 1. Introduction

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  Avlida sits on the Greek mainland, but its administrative address assigns it to an island. The Euboea regional unit claims the town officially, though it occupies the northeastern edge of Boeotia. Since the 2011 local government reform, Avlida has been part of the municipality of Chalcis. At the 2021 census, 10,006 people lived there across 122.235 square kilometres. The municipal seat was in Vathy.

  Vathy sits at the edge of a coast that carried a very different identity in the ancient world. What that identity was, and who came to claim this shoreline in the centuries that followed, are questions worth following.

• 2. The Mythic Shore

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  Greek tradition identified this coast as Aulis, the port where the Greek army gathered before sailing for Troy. The identification is described as traditional rather than confirmed. It was strong enough that Euripides chose this coast as the setting for his play Iphigenia in Aulis.

  The association between Aulis and the Trojan expedition made this stretch of water deeply meaningful. That meaning outlasted the ancient world by many centuries. By 1350, those same waters would become the site of a very different kind of armed encounter.

• 3. Ancient Ground

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  The ancient temple of Artemis once stood near this shore, and its location did not fade from memory. Byzantine-era remains were found near the temple site. They point to religious activity that persisted well beyond the classical period. What exactly was built there across the intervening centuries remains only partially answered.

  The founding date of Avlida as a modern settlement is not precisely known. The region had been inhabited since Antiquity. The earliest fixed marker for the community here is the church of Saint Nicholas, built in the early 11th century. The community that gathered around that church would eventually find itself at the edge of a conflict between rival maritime powers.

• 4. The Battle of 1350

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  In 1350, the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa were at war. Venetian forces defeated a Genoese fleet off the coast of Avlida, capturing all fourteen of its galleys. The engagement was part of a broader conflict between two rival republics. Avlida's coast on the mainland faced the island of Euboea, where Venice held a colony, which made the stretch of water between them a point of direct military relevance.

  In the late 14th century, Avlida likely became part of a strip of coastal land, five miles wide, that Venice controlled along the mainland. That strip faced Negroponte, as the Venetians called their colony on Euboea. From that five-mile band of territory, Venice held a continuous presence on the continental shore opposite its island possession.