Roupel

Above the abandoned village of Kleidi, formerly Rupel, a ruined Byzantine tower keeps a lonely watch over the Strymonas valley. The structure, a rectangular affair of roughly eight by three metres, survives only as a few foundation stones on its western side, the rest collapsed and swallowed by vegetation. Its position was no accident: this is the Rupel pass, a nine or ten kilometre corridor between the Belles and Agkistro mountains, and for centuries the principal gateway from the Balkan interior to the plain of Serres. The Byzantine route did not follow the modern riverside road, for the Strymon then ran far wider, and at its narrowest the passage squeezed to just three metres. The tower's history is obscure, though the area saw the Battle of Kleidion in 1014, when Basil II crushed the Bulgarians, and a Byzantine victory over them again in 1255, the first mention of the pass as Rupeliou dyschoria. The name likely derives from the Latin rupes, steep rocks. Nearby stands the rebuilt church of Agios Dimitrios; the modern name Kleidi, bestowed in 1926, rather dubiously recalls that earlier battle.