By Nikolas Bardis

About 16 kilometers away from Larissa we find Tyrnavos, a town widely known for the tsipouro and ouzo it produces, as well as for “Bourani”, the local carnival that has ancient roots. It is the fifth largest city in population in Thessaly, which is built at a crossroads of road arteries that connect Larissa with Elassona. The privileged geographical position and the proximity to the large urban center of Larissa, resulted in the city keeping its world and developing, luck that other areas of the plain did not have.

The city of Tyrnavos is mentioned for the first time as “Ternovon” in the middle of the 10th century in a martyrology for Agios Nikolaos the ἐν Vunainῃ. This is the mountain to which the Saint fled after being chased, which the editor of the martyrology, Professor Dimitrios Sofianos, identifies with Mount Meluna. The neighboring town was also named after the mountain. The etymology of the word is Slavic “трнова” (meaning thorny), from трн (thorn), which goes back to Proto-Slavic *tьrnъ with the same meaning. Still others argue that the name of the city comes from the Turkish word “turnas”, and the neighboring Titaris River.

The wider area of ​​Tyrnavos, due to its privileged geographical location and climatic conditions, has attracted man since the beginning of civilization. Recent investigations have brought to light an important site of the early Paleolithic era (200-400 thousand years before today) at the western entrance of the straits of Rhodia, shortly after the confluence of the Titarisios with the Pinios river.

The current location of the city and the wider area were first chosen as a place of permanent settlement in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age (7th-4th and 3rd-1st millennia BC). A low circular “magoula”, about 300 meters south-east of the modern cemetery and between newly built houses, was a Neolithic settlement. A little further north, the Karagats or Balabani mound, 600 meters northeast of the city center, is somewhat larger and higher than the previous one and also dates back to the Neolithic era.

Another site of great archaeological value is the Kastri hill, 3 kilometers southeast of Tyrnavos. This particular hill was inhabited throughout the Bronze Age, in the classical, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine times and was the center of a great ancient city, Falanna. Falanna was a city on the southern border line of Perravia, which was located between Thessaly and Macedonia, occupying the area of ​​Lower Olympus. The Perraivoi were “neighbors” of Thessaly and were for the longest time under the political and economic control of the Pelasgian Larissa. Philip II in 352 BC. annexed Peravia to the Macedonian state, but with the fall of Macedonian rule in 196 BC. Perraevia was again under Thessalian control.

However, apart from the great ancient history, the city is inextricably linked with the textile art and the famous stamps, which characterized the area for almost two whole centuries. In the 18th century, Tyrnavos experienced development in various sectors and the craft industry flourished. The products of the local textile industry were famous all over Greece, but also abroad, while Tyrnavos was already famous from the time of Justinian for its printed silks, the so-called “stampotas”. The inhabitants processed the silk and wove it. Along with the silk fabrics, he traded the well-known “bouchasia”, cotton fabrics dyed with rice and blue ones dyed with rose.

The prints and molds required a lot of time, patience and persistence, and each one was a true work of art. Stampers were usually self-taught. So they carved the stamps, which were made of soft wood (linden) or hard (wild maidenhair). The print with the basic black border was called “mother” or “womb” and featured the finest carving. The creators drew themes from the animal kingdom, as well as from neoclassical, ancient Greek and newer motifs.

Tyrnavos may now be a mostly rural area, but it has a rich history, a glorious past, it is inextricably linked to traditional arts and great figures of the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment came from there, such as D. Alexandritis, G. Zachariadis, Laz. Paschos, Steph. Dougas, Kon/nos Kouskouroulis and others. The Tyrnavite intellectuals were influenced by the French Enlightenment, and contributed financially to the publication of scientific books, mainly translations of European thinkers and scientists, putting their city once again at the center of developments.