Maximianoupolis-Mosynopolis

Maximianoupolis, later Mosynopolis, was one of the largest Byzantine cities in Thrace, yet today almost nothing remains above ground. The early name, first recorded by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century, likely honours the emperor Galerius, whose full name included Maximianus. By the late ninth century it was known as Mosynopolis, possibly from an ancient word for a wooden tower, though the medieval chronicler Kantakouzinos oddly called it Messini. The fortifications enclosed a vast rectangle of some 382,000 square metres, with a perimeter beyond 2.5 kilometres, making it perhaps the third largest city in the Balkans after Constantinople and Thessaloniki. The walls, about 2.5 metres thick, boasted circular corner towers and rectangular interval towers every 50 metres, so over fifty in all. Only three low towers survive, along with stretches of foundation-level masonry, largely smothered by vegetation. Excavations in the 1970s revealed part of the western wall, and a fine eleventh or twelfth century church, probably the episcopal seat, stands fenced within the site. A 70-metre arched structure outside the north wall may have been an aqueduct.