Kavala to Philippi
Casamara
John & Susan Simpson
Sun 6 Jul 2025 15:45
| When planning our trip around Greece I was completely focused on seeing as many places visited by St Paul as possible and hadn’t really looked at the wider picture. So, after flying into Alexandroupolis airport from Crete, it came as a bit of a surprise that the first signpost on the road out of town showed a right turn to Bulgaria! It turns out that Alexandroupolis is closer to Istanbul than it is to Athens, and only just over 50 miles to either the Bulgarian or Turkish borders. Kavala was our first stop along the coast. This was Neapolis, where St Paul disembarked on his second missionary journey around AD 50. He’d come from Troas, near Dalyan in modern Turkey, where he’d had a vision of a Macedonian man urging him to come to Macedonia. Kavala was founded in mid-7th century BC and by the time Paul arrived it had become the seaport for Philippi (10 miles to the north west) and a station on the Roman Via Egnatia, which connected Rome to Constantinople (Istanbul). On a particularly hot day we climbed our way up through the narrow streets and steps of the Kavala old town to the fortress dominating the hilltop alongside the ancient port area. The walls of the old town have been reinforced and rebuilt over the ages and mostly date now from the early 15th century. Kavala was conquered by the Ottomans in 1391 and only returned to the Greek state in 1913. Christian and Islamic religious buildings were built, demolished and rebuilt or repurposed on the site over time. It was a fabulous view from the top and we could imagine the Via Egnatia stretching away in the distance towards Philippi, Paul’s next stop. The Roman road is still visible in places, although the modern A2 motorway also follows a similar route so much of it is now buried. Kavala today is much loved by Bulgarian tourists and is a pleasant holiday town with sandy beaches, plenty of harbourside restaurants and a small yachting marina. Kavala Fortress John looking towards Philippi and the Via Egnatia From Kavala we visited Philippi early one morning so that we could be back at the hotel by lunchtime to watch the British and Irish Lions play rugby on the TV - this is not just a biblical history tour you know! As it happens, it was great timing as we were there before any of the big tour groups arrived and had the place pretty much to ourselves. It was moving to be there, in the place where Europe’s first Christian community formed. We were struck by the size of the archaeological site; the remains of the Roman Forum and the Amphitheatre were particularly memorable. You could really feel that this had been a city of impressive size and appearance. The site is still under excavation and in places it resembled a giant jigsaw puzzle waiting to be assembled. There’s a small archaeological museum there too, with lots of useful information to make sense of what can be seen today. The Theatre - it was there in Paul’s time but enlarged later to keep up with changes in Roman culture We peered into the building where, legend has it, Paul and Silas were kept prisoner after they had been publicly flogged in the Forum. What we see today was likely to have been a Roman water cistern built on the spot where the prison had previously been. Later it became a place of worship associated with Paul. Prison of St Paul View from the Prison to the Forum nearby A short distance away, just outside the city walls, there is a village called Lydia which was named after the woman who is traditionally held to have been the first Christian convert here. She was baptised in the stream which runs through the village and there is now a beautifully decorated Baptistry there, and a Conference Centre for some reason! Inside the Saint Lydia Philippisia Sacred Baptistry Philippi was extremely important to St Paul and he went on to have a close relationship with the church he started there. He returned at least twice more and the New Testament Book of Philippians is a letter he wrote to them in thanks for gifts they had sent upon hearing he had been imprisoned (again!). We came away from Philippi realising how difficult life must have been for the early Apostles and how strong was their determination to continue despite much persecution. It was not for another 350 years after Paul’s first visit to Philippi that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Following his journey, we started to realise just how important St Paul had been in sewing the seeds to make that happen. |