Avantas
Avantas, the Evros village with many antiquities
Approximately 11 km from Alexandoupolis, to the north of the Egnatia Motorway, is the village of Avantas. Nearby are a number of antiquities, demonstrating the importance of the area from Roman at least until Ottoman times.
Monuments and Antiquities
Castles of Avantas and Potamos
The two castles, built very close together, effectively controlled the mountain passes through the southeastern foothills of the Rhodope range, connecting the Evros plain with the plain of Komotini, and the coast with the hinterland of Thrace. According to the Ottoman historian and geographer Haci Kalfa, a high-ranking administrative official under Sultans Murad IV (1623-1640), Ibrahim I (1640-1648) and Mehmed IV (1648-1687), the local mountain passes were used in Ottoman times by people travelling on foot to the small town of Şapsçılar (present-day Sapes). Those who had wheeled vehicles, however, followed the road to the south of Avantas, which passed through the village of Makri, a station of the Via Egnatia.
The first castle stands on the steep Boz-Tepe Hill just north of Avantas. It is a non-rectangular parallelogram shape and encloses an area of just under a hectare. Its enceinte is reinforced by four-sided towers, four of which are visible today.
The second castle, known as the Castle of Potamos, is located south of Avantas, on the long, low, rocky hill near the Potamos railway station on the Komotini–Alexandoupolis line, close to the abandoned village of Potamos (Bulgarian Badoma), which was inhabited by Bulgarians before the region’s incorporation into the Greek State in 1920. The Alexandoupolis–Avantas provincial road passes west of the castle. The castle has a perimeter about 600 m long and encloses an area of no more than 8,000 m2. It has two fortified enclosures: the smaller, triangular inner one, with an area of about 1,000 m2, is in the north part of the castle, higher up the rocky hill. The castle’s defences are reinforced at intervals by strong towers, four-sided except for one which is trapezoidal. The castle gate, on the south side of the outer enclosure, is protected by two towers, one quadrilateral and one heptagonal. The largest tower, on the west side of the inner enclosure, may be the castle keep due to its position and size.
The lack of inscriptions or written references to the two castles prevents us from determining the year of their foundation or whether they were built at the same time. At least two building phases can be identified in the Castle of Potamos. Based on the features of the two castles, it has been suggested that they date from the 14th century, before the Ottoman conquest of the region; the conquest of Thrace was completed in 1373, after their victory against the Serbs at the Battle of Marica (1371). The few pottery sherds recovered from the two castles belong to the late 13th and the 14th century.
It has been suggested that the Castle of Potamos may be the Güvercinlik (meaning “dovecote” in Turkish) mentioned in the epic of Umur, the Emir of Aydın. If this is true, then it may be identified with the Castle of Peristeria (meaning “dovecote” in Greek), mentioned by Byzantine sources a short distance west of Bera (present-day Feres). The castle seems to have already been abandoned by the 15th century, according to the Burgundian traveller Bertrandon de la Broquière, who visited it during his voyage in 1432-1433. In the 17th century it remained deserted and ruined, “the only visitors being the local sheep and goats”, according to the account of the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi, who visited the nearby village of Güvercinlik in the late 1670s.
Antiquities in the Potamos area
During work on the construction of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which was completed in 2019, the remains of a large three-aisled Εarly Βyzantine basilica with a narthex and a spacious atrium were uncovered 1,700 m southwest of the Castle of Potamos. Outside the narthex and the atrium, architectural remains have come to light which, based on the movable finds and coins, belong to the Roman period. The basilica was in use until the third quarter of the 6th century AD, when it was destroyed, probably by fire. Just a few metres southeast of the basilica, an unlooted cist grave of the 2nd or 3rd century AD was found, with particularly rich grave goods which are now on display in the Archaeological Museum of Alexandoupolis. A number of architectural remains were uncovered in the wider area, indicating that both the basilica and the grave were part of a fortification and settlement complex that was in use from Roman to Early Christian times.
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Cave Church of the Saints Theodore
The church is located in a narrow valley between high cliffs, 4 km west of Avantas and a few km northwest of the Castle of Potamos, almost next to the Alexandoupolis–Komotini railway line. There are caves in the rocks of the valley, at least one of which was inhabited at some point, indicating that the area was used by ascetics in Byzantine times and that the Church of the Saints Theodore was a hermitage.
A long, narrow corridor leads to the main church in the cave, a spacious, roughly rectangular chamber measuring 5 x 3.5 m. The sanctuary is delimited by a built templon.
Inside the church of the Saints Theodore are preserved frescoes which, although fragmentary, are of remarkable quality. The images do not follow the established iconographic programme of Byzantine churches, but are randomly arranged and unconnected, with the exception of the scenes in the sanctuary and on the built templon. The emphasis on scenes associated with the figure of the Theotokos (the Mother of God) suggests that the cave was originally dedicated to the Virgin rather than the Saints Theodore. Three layers of paintings can be discerned, the first of which is found on a small surface on the south side of the built templon and probably dates to the 9th-10th centuries. The scenes of the second layer are also limited; the best preserved is the Dormition of the Virgin, dating from the late 11th or early 12th century. The third and more extensively preserved layer is dated, on the basis of stylistic criteria, to the third quarter of the 13th century. Images such as the Great Deesis on the templon or the enthroned Theotokos between two archangels on the north wall attest that the workshop that painted the frescoes of the third layer in this inaccessible mountainous region of Rhodope was familiar with the artistic trends prevailing in Constantinople at the time.
