Sitochori Sofiko The largest settlements, other than Didymoteicho itself, are Sofikó (pop. 795), Metaxades (687), Koufóvouno (629), Lagós (620) and Ellinochóri (593). Province The province of Didymoteicho () was one of the provinces of the Evros Prefecture. Its territory corresponded with that of the current municipality Didymoteicho and the municipal unit Orfeas. It was abolished in 2006. History Antiquity The area around the town was inhabited in Neolithic times. It was later an important Thracian and Hellenistic town, sacked by the Romans in 204 BC. In the early 2nd century, the Roman emperor Trajan created a new city on the banks of the Maritsa River, between two surrounding hills, near modern Turkish Uzunköprü, and named it Plotinopolis after his wife Pompeia Plotina. The ruins of the ancient city are now known as the Kale, after the Turkish for "castle". A solid gold bust of Emperor Septimius Severus found on the site of Plotinopolis in 1965 is now in the museum at Komotini. The city had been built in a very strategic position, because it had for exploitation a very fertile plain and also controlled a passage of Erythropotamos, through which passed a branch of the via Egnatia leading in the middle and upper valley of Evros river and on the shores of the Black Sea. The city would later be one of the most important towns in Thrace, having its own assembly, and an episcopal see (suffragan of Adrianople). The first bishop of the city, Hierophilus, is mentioned in the 430s. Medieval era According to Procopius of Caesarea, Emperor Justinian I () improved the fortifications of Plotinopolis. It was probably at that time that the nearby higher, rocky and hence more defensible hill was also fortified. The name "Didymoteichon" ("twin fortification") appears in 591/592, and probably referred to this double fortified settlement. Given the exposed lowland location of Plotinopolis, the site was soon abandoned in favour of the more recent fortress, a process that was possibly completed already in the 7th century. The name "Plotinopolis" survived for the episcopal see until the 9th century, before it too was replaced. In summer 813, during his invasion of Thrace, the Bulgarian ruler Krum captured the town, but in 879 it was a bishopric whose incumbent, Nikephoros, participated in the Ninth Council of Constantinople. A 9th-century seal attests to the presence of a kommerkiarios in the city. A century later, the town served