Museum of the Sea

About

Built at the innermost point of the Pagasetic Gulf and at the foot of Mount Pilio ( Pelion, the land of the Centaurs ). The city spreads in the plain on the foothills of Mount Pelion, bordering the town of Agria to the east and Nea Anchialos to the southwest. Volos's municipality includes both towns, along with many nearby villages, including Makrinitsa and Portaria.

Volos is a major commercial port of mainland Greece in the Aegean sea (after Piraeus and Thessaloniki), with connection by ferry and hydrofoil to the nearby Sporades Islands, which include Skiathos, Skopelos and Alonissos. There are also connections to Lemnos, Lesbos, Chios and Skyros.

Further information: Ancient Greece and Hellenistic Greece

Modern Volos is built on the area of the ancient cities of Demetrias, Pagasae and Iolcos. Demetrias was established in 293 BC by Demetrius Poliorcetes, King of Macedon. Iolcus, or Iolkos, was known in mythology as the homeland of the hero Jason, who boarded the ship Argo accompanied by the Argonauts and sailed in quest of the Golden Fleece to Colchis. To the west of Volos lie the Neolithic settlements of Dimini, with a ruined acropolis, walls, and two beehive tombs dating to between 4000 and 1200 BC, and Sesklo, with the remains of the oldest acropolis in Greece (6000 BC). The mound of Kastro/Palaia in western Volos is the site of a Bronze Age settlement, including a Mycenaean palace complex where a couple of preserved Linear B tablets have been found.

- Further information: Byzantine Greece Iolcus is still attested in the early Byzantine period but was eclipsed for most of the Middle Ages by Demetrias. The Slavic tribe of the Belegezites settled in the area during the 7th century.

Volos first appears again in 1333, as one of the cities captured by the Byzantine general John Monomachos in Thessaly, under the name "Golos" (Γόλος). The name is of Slavic origin, from golo, golъ, "barren". Another theory derives the name from Slavic golosh, "seat of administration". Two alternative theories allude to a Greek origin through the words βολή (throw), as fishermen threw their nets into the sea from that area, and βώλος (piece of land) but the Greek scholar G. Hatzidakis considers them to be paretymologies at best. The modern form of the name is first attested in 1540.

The walls of medieval Golos follow the traces of the fortifications of ancient Iolcus, and many remnants of the ancient city have been found in the medieval citadel.

Along with the rest of Thessaly, Volos fell under Serbian rule in 1348, governed by Gregory Preljub. After Preljub's death Thessaly passed under the brief rule of Nikephoros II Orsini, followed by the Serbian rulers Simeon Uroš and John Uroš. After the latter's death in 1373, Thessaly returned under Byzantine rule for twenty years, until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Bayezid I.

Ottoman rule was not yet firm. The first period of Ottoman control lasted from 1393 to 1397, followed by another c. 1403, but it was not until 1423 that Volos was definitively incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman name of the city was Ottoman Turkish : قلز, romanized : Quluz. The Ottomans strengthened the town's fortifications against a possible Venetian attack, and installed not only a garrison, but also Muslim settlers from Anatolia. The local Christian population in turn moved to the slopes of Pelion. From this time on, Volos became the chief settlement on the Pagasetic Gulf.

The city began to spread outside its walls in the late 16th/early 17th centuries, coinciding with a growth in commerce, helped by the city's famed twice-weekly local fair and the first works at the waterfront harbour. The fortress was captured by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini in 1665, during the Cretan War, but recovered and refortified by the Ottomans.

In May 1821, at the beginning of the Greek Revolution, the Greek rebels of Mount Pelion tried to capture the fortress but failed. On 8 April 1827, the Greek fleet, under the command of the British philhellene Frank Abney Hastings, captured five Ottoman ships in the city's harbour and forced the local garrison to evacuate the fortress. The provisional government of Greece claimed Volos as part of Greek national territory, but the Treaty of Constantinople (1832), which established a Greek independent state, set its northern boundary along a line running south from Arta to Volos. Volos was incorporated into the Greek Kingdom in November 1881 with the rest of Thessaly.

After its incorporation into the Greek Kingdom, the town had a population of only 4,900, but grew rapidly in the next four decades as merchants, businessmen, craftsmen and sailors gravitated toward it from the surrounding area. In the 1920s a large influx of refugees to the settlement took place, especially from Ionia, but also from Pontus, Cappadocia and Eastern Thrace. In 1882, Andreas Syngros established the Privileged Bank of Epirothessaly, which the National Bank of Greece acquired in 1899 after its founder's death. Volos was occupied by Ottomans on 8 May 1897, during the Greco Turkish War.

The city had a vibrant Jewish community in the early 20th century: from ≈500 in 1896, it rose to ≈2,000 in 1930, before falling drastically to 882 members in 1940, because of emigration to the great cities of Thessaloniki and Athens or abroad. During the Axis occupation of Greece, the prompt actions of the local rabbi, Moshe Pesach, and the Greek authorities saved about 700 of the local Jewish community from deportation to the Nazi death camps.

After an aerial attack by Italian troops in November 1940 and another by the Germans in 1941, many of the city's inhabitants took refuge in the villages of Pelion. Abandoning Volos after Italy's capitulation in September 1943, the Italians left storerooms full of food, arms and ammunition. Large quantities of this material was transported with the Pelion railway to the mountain village Milies and under the supervision of ELAS loaded onto mules and taken to secure hideaways. When the Germans set off a column to Milies an officer and a soldier were killed by resistance fighters. In reprisal nearly the whole village was burnt down by German occupation troops on 4 October 1943. According to the official report of the municipality the Germans executed 25 men, and three inhabitants died in their houses from the flames.

Volos is also well known for its assortment of mezedes and a clear alcoholic beverage known as tsipouro.

A street in a sister city, Rostov-on-Don, bears the name Улица Греческого Города Волос (Street of the Greek City of Volos), weaving through a mix of early 20th-century buildings with characteristic inner yards, tiered balconies and open iron stairs that lend the old Rostov its characteristic Mediterranean look.

In September 2023 the city of Volos was flooded by massive rain.

Further information: Ancient Greece and Hellenistic Greece

Modern Volos is built on the area of the ancient cities of Demetrias, Pagasae and Iolcos. Demetrias was established in 293 BC by Demetrius Poliorcetes, King of Macedon. Iolcus, or Iolkos, was known in mythology as the homeland of the hero Jason, who boarded the ship Argo accompanied by the Argonauts and sailed in quest of the Golden Fleece to Colchis. To the west of Volos lie the Neolithic settlements of Dimini, with a ruined acropolis, walls, and two beehive tombs dating to between 4000 and 1200 BC, and Sesklo, with the remains of the oldest acropolis in Greece (6000 BC). The mound of Kastro/Palaia in western Volos is the site of a Bronze Age settlement, including a Mycenaean palace complex where a couple of preserved Linear B tablets have been found.

Further information: Byzantine Greece Iolcus is still attested in the early Byzantine period but was eclipsed for most of the Middle Ages by Demetrias. The Slavic tribe of the Belegezites settled in the area during the 7th century.