Madem Aga

The Madem Aga tower is the surviving administrative heart of a far older enterprise. It stands in ruins within what archaeologists now call the medieval fortified complex of Sidirokafsia, a settlement whose Slavic name, Isvoro, attached to the nearby village. Mining defined this place from Byzantine times, with silver and lead production recorded as early as the ninth century, but the true boom came under the Ottomans in the fifteenth century. The tower itself, likely built then or in the early 1500s, served as the seat of the Turkish lord, the Madem Aga, whose title derived from the Turkish word for iron ore. Some twenty metres away lie the foundations of what was probably his mansion, the konak. Both sit within a small park named for Aristotle, whose birthplace, Stageira, lies nearby. A second, isolated Ottoman tower survives on a rise northwest of the village, close to the same park, a further fragment of this once prosperous metal-working settlement.