Zavarnikeia

On a low hill two and a half kilometres southwest of Mavrolofos in the Serres prefecture, the scant remains of a Byzantine tower mark the site of the vanished settlement of Zavarnikeia. The hill was inhabited from classical times into the nineteenth century, but the tower itself was probably raised in the fourteenth century, when the place belonged to the Vatopedi Monastery of Mount Athos. Imperial chrysobulls trace the estate from 1080, when Nikephoros III Botaneiates recorded it as a proasteion near Chrysopolis, through confirmations by Alexios I Komnenos, Andronikos II and Andronikos III Palaiologos, the Serbian ruler Stefanos Dusan in 1348, and finally Ioannis V Palaiologos in 1356, who mentions the tower explicitly. Excavation in the 1980s exposed only the foundations of the quadrilateral tower, 2.13 by 4.00 metres, built of grey stone and lime mortar. Nearby survive traces of a small single-room church, whose altar incorporated a Roman milestone of 305/306 AD, suggesting the Egnatia Road passed this way. The settlement itself faded in the late nineteenth century, its buildings quarried for later construction.