Alexandroupolis - City of Greece

Alexandroupoli is a city of Greece and the capital of the Evros Prefecture in Thrace. Names for the city in other languages include: Latin - Alexandropolis and Bulgarian, Dedeagach.

The city's history only goes back to the 19th century. Long used as a landing ground for fishermen from the coast of Samothrace opposite, the location was known as Dedeagatch . The name was based on a local tradition of a wise dervish having spent much of his time in the shade of a local tree and being eventually buried beside it.

The defeat of Bulgaria by the Allies in World War I ensured another change of hands for the town. The Treaty of Neuilly required the ceding of Western Thrace from Bulgaria to Greece. However, Bulgaria retained the right of transit to use the port of Dedeagatch to transport goods through the Aegean Sea. The change of guard between Bulgarian and Greek officials occurred on May 14, 1920. The city was soon visited by Alexander I of Greece amidst great celebration. He was the first King of Greece to visit the town which was renamed in his honor.

The area in Aissymi north of Alexandroupoli was ravaged by a forest fire in late-July 2007. Another natural disaster occurred on 6 August 2007, days after the fire; it happened near the villages of Makri and Dikella, with a tremendous rainstorm brought across from a low pressure system in Central Europe. Heavy rains during the morning hours were extensive enough to flood homes and damage properties, even cutting off a bridge and splitting Mesimvria in two.

Several mudslides were reported and properties flooded in the prefectural capital city of Alexandroupoli and several stores, and near Alexandroupoli, in its main railway linking west to Thessaloniki cutting the entire Evros Prefecture's railway into two, a bridge was washed away by its stream, leaving nothing but tracks; residents watched the phenomenon next to the train tens of metres from where the bridge had stood. The Egnatia Odos motorway was also shut off to traffic. Off the Thracian Gulf by the coasts of Makri by its campground and beach, a trailer floated as far as 1 km away from the seashore, and the rainstorm also affected Dikella and the surrounding areas, particularly on the coastline.

Alexandroupoli houses part of the Democritus University of Thrace (based in Komotini), most notably the department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and also Medical and Primary Education Departments. Some highly specialised medical operations are performed in the new Regional University Hospital - Research center, currently the largest one in the Balkans.

The city has a network of public schools, from nurseries to high schools, under the responsibility of the city council . There are also many private lanquage schools, most of them offering European Languages courses. Like many other cities in Greece, Alexandroupoli now handles the integration of a large number of expatriates and immigrants from Russia, Central Asia and Middle East. Lanquages spoken by the citizens include: Greek, English, Russian, Bulgarian, Armenian, German, and Turkish. The city has a reputation of consistently exporting high number of students to attend national and international universities.

The city is similarly famous for the many painters that where born here over the years. a. Tarsoudis, Rallis Kopsidis, Syni Anastassiadi, Theodoros Agglias, Maria Sidiropoulou, Paschalis Angelidis, Victoria Dedegian,and Economou-Maurogeni Zoe.

Its most popular writers are: Kalliopi Papathanassi-Moussiopoulou, Angelos Poimenidis and Georgios Stavridis.