MYTILENE

:''This city is not to be confused with a village in the island of Samos named "Mytilinioi"''
'Mytilene' (Greek: Μυτιλήνη - ''Mytilíni'', Turkish: Midilli), also 'Mytilini', is the capital city of Lesbos (formerly known as Lesbos but the modern name is Mytilene), a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, and the Lesbos Prefecture as well. It has a population of 32,000. Mytilene is linked with a highway numbered (GR-67) linking to Skala Eressou on the other side of the island of Lesbos. Farmlands surround Mytilini, the mountains cover the west and to the north. The airport is located a few kilometres south on the small highway.
Mytilini has a beautiful port with ferries to the nearby islands of Lemnos and Chios and Ayvalık in Turkey. The port also serves the mainland cities of Piraeus, Athens and Thessaloniki. One ship, named during the 2001 IAAF games in Edmonton ''Aeolos Kenteris'', after Kostas Kenteris, used to serve this city (his hometown) with 6-hour routes from Athens and Thessaloniki. The main port serving Mytilini on the Greek mainland is Piraeus.

Contents

Historical population

Other

Sporting teams

Famous people from Mytilene

See also

References

External links

Historical population

Year	Communal population	Change	Municipal population	Change
1981	24,991	-	-	-
1991	23,971	-1,020/-4.08%	33,157	-
2001	27,247	+3,276/+13.7%	-	-

Other

Mytilene has schools, lyceums, gymnasia, churches, a post office, beaches, a hospital and a few squares (''plateies''). The town of Mytilene is also the center of the University of the Aegean.
Archaeological excavations carried out between 1984-1994 in the medieval castle of Mytilene by the University of British Columbia and directed by Caroline and Hector Williams revealed a previously unknown sanctuary of Demeter and Kore of late classical/Hellenistic date and the burial chapel of the Gattelusi, the medieval Genoese family that ruled the northern Aegean from the mid 14th-mid 15th centuries of our era. Other excavations done jointly with the K' Ephoreia of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities near the North Harbour of the city uncovered a multiperiod site with remains extending from a late Ottoman cemetery (including a "vampire" burial, a middle aged man with 20 cm. spikes through his neck, middle and ankles) to a substantial Roman building constructed around a colonnaded courtyard to remains of Hellenistic structures and debris from different Hellenistic manufacturing processes (pottery, figurines, cloth making and dyeing, bronze and iron working) to archaic and classical levels with rich collections of Aeolic grey wares.
Mytilene is famous for its ouzo. There are more than than 15 commercial producers on the island. Mytilene is known for and an exporter of Sardines from the Bay of Kalloni.

Sporting teams

★ Aiolikos

Famous people from Mytilene

★ Sappho an Ancient Greek lyric poet and earliest known person to have a same-sex love affair between women (lesbian)

★ Odysseas Elytis (Literature Nobelist)

★ Theophilos Hatzimihail (Folklore Painter)

★ Alcaeus (Ancient Greek Poet)

★ Pittacus

★ Kostas Kenteris (Greek athlete)

★ Oruç Reis (Ottoman-Turkish privateer and Bey of Algiers)

★ Barbaros Hayreddin Pasha Ottoman-Turkish privateer and Bey of Algiers, brother of Oruç Reis)

★ Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha (Ottoman grand vizier)

★ Cemal Pasha (Ottoman-Turkish soldier and politician),

See also

★ Communities of the Lesbos prefecture

★ University of the Aegean

References

External links

★ 'Map and aerial photos':

★
★ Street map: Street map from Mapquest, MapPoint or Google

★
★ Satellite images: Google